Accountants & visionaries

The easiest part of managing the national economy in Pakistan is the exercise of putting together annual budgets. Most of the time, it is done through back-calculation. A notional but ambitious figure is earmarked as the proposed target of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the next financial year. This is followed by estimates of equally notional contributions as per their respective sizes, from large and small manufacturing, agriculture, constructions, and services sectors. In fact the whole balance sheet, more often than not, is based on fanciful estimates all around. Unlike in other democratic countries where shadow cabinets keep a close watch on the economy, we in Pakistan do not have such a tradition. Neither do we have the tradition of debating various aspects of the budget in specialised parliamentary committees before it is brought to the House for voting. At best, a hasty debate on the proposals is conducted in the National Assembly (NA) for no more than three weeks and then it is passed in a hurry as if both the government and the opposition members have other more ‘important’ business to attend to outside the NA. The only matter that brings the best or the worst out of these members during the debate is the head under which generous allocations are made for their own use, ostensibly for development purposes in their respective constituencies. These allocations, which are in fact bribes, keep these members across the aisle from asking searching questions about the amount of money and where it is coming from, and the quantity being spent on various heads and why. This practice of bribing the members of parliament was introduced by General Ziaul Haq to keep members of the 1985 parliament from questioning his authority, thus enabling him to take all kinds of strategic decisions, including financial, without consulting parliament or the cabinet.

Every budget is touted as a social-welfare oriented balance-sheet with both the rich and the indigent welcoming it as if once passed, it will make the rich richer and enable the destitute to break through the poverty line and join the middle classes, if not the richer ones, in a matter of 12 months.

That at the end of the year the rich become richer at the cost of the poor, is usually suppressed as a tale by those who are against progress and development in Pakistan. The reason why we have continued to fail in establishing a social-welfare oriented economy in the country despite proclaiming that that is what we are engaged in doing year after year, is because Pakistan has continued to remain a security state since its inception. There is no way a security state would become a social-welfare state just by wishing it to be so. We need to re-think our economic strategies and come up with an economic vision that would ensure our security and at the same time enable the national economy to generate enough ‘Roti, Kapra and Makan’(RKM) for all.

Of course many would derisively reject the mantra of RKM which is associated with the late ZA Bhutto and his PPP. But the fact is, it is no light-weight mantra. Within it is embedded what is today called social capitalism. Bhutto was not an economic visionary. In fact, his nationalisation policy is considered by many to have retarded our growth. But the economic assets that he built during his short rule of four years cannot be matched by any regime, either military or civilian, except to some extent that of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who preceded him. Bhutto’s daughter Benazir Bhutto was also not an economic visionary, but if one went back to her two short rules one can detect attempts by her to make the best use of Pakistan’s strategic location as a hub of regional commercial activity. She was vehemently opposed on grounds of security. But today we are just about to become a trans-shipment economy because China wants to shorten its reach to world markets from 45 to 12 days. And with Chinese shipments traversing Pakistan round the clock, we can now afford to allow transit trade facility to India without any security reservations.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th,  2015.

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