Tall claims

• PML-N style

End-of-term is when the incumbent typically waxes eloquent about gains made in virtually every area of government responsibility. And so it was with the outgoing government the other day, when PM Abbasi praised PML-N’s performance is all fields possible, even though he clearly crossed the line separating fact from fiction on a number of occasions. True, credit advanced to the agriculture sector has expanded somewhat from the time PPP bowed out in 2013; and production has also increased, even though we are yet to breach our production possibility frontier.

He was not so on the mark, however, on other points. Inflation, for example, did stay low during this electoral cycle but PML-N should be the last party to take credit for it. Luckily, the N league took office just when international Brent crude had gone through the floor and oil was around $27/barrel, which kept inflation subdued. Now, with the government completing its term, oil is crossing $80/barrel and headed for the psychological hundred-dollar barrier. There’s a good reason the state bank advanced the interest rate another 50 basis points to 6.5 percent; inflation is rising and with stagnant wages, it should begin choking the working class about half way through the next fiscal, just when the next administration will start getting comfortable.

And how could PM Abbasi, and then Finance Minister Ismail, even talk about the circular debt with a straight face? For one thing it is, at this point, much higher than the Rs480b which they say they inherited from PPP. And even if they can scale it back to the same about, what about the one-time payoff made to bring the level down to zero immediately after PML-N came to power five years ago? Why has that unaudited dispersal never been investigated? And why has the debt grown so large so quickly?

Fancy words will not hide the fact that the outgoing government has failed to live up to its promises in areas like energy, social uplift and, most importantly, the real economy.