Sheer incompetence
Why is the prime minister so surprised about the sorry situation in exports? And why – if the press can be trusted – has he held the poor commerce minister responsible? Crowd out private investment (excess government borrowing from the credit market), jack up input prices (LNG price, for example), keep the rupee inflated and boast about it, and what do you expect? Maybe now that the textile lobby – the biggest of the export earners – has complained to the national assembly standing committee on finance, someone might tell the prime minister that the fault lies more with his man running the finance ministry, not Khurram Dastgir.
The economy’s so broken that the government has been borrowing, just to run the government, for years – the classic crowding out effect. There is no provision in the commerce ministry to affect liquidity made available or denied to private investment. Input costs have run through the roof because someone in government, not long ago, rubbished all concern and went ahead with a dubious LNG deal. And Dar sb likes the strong rupee so much that he once got the Saudis to park a billion dollars in our central bank just so he could win a bet against Sh Rashid.
And now exports are tanking just when imports are higher than usual – only partly due to CPEC – and remittances are under pressure. Perhaps Nawaz Sharif will hold the commerce minister responsible if PML-N can’t quite sell the economy in the next election.
