KARACHI:
Pakistanis are known for their excessive consumptive nature, which can be substantiated by the World Bank’s statistics on Pakistan’s gross domestic savings (GDS) as a percentage of our national gross domestic product (GDP). For the year 2020, Pakistan’s GDS was just 8.4%. The obsession with consumption is also evident by the increased purchase of expensive items such as automobiles.
In our recent history, auto-financing by banks has created a flood of automobiles on our limited road infrastructure. When CNG was introduced as an alternative fuel for vehicles (2004-2005), everyone was happy to have a cheap fuel that also gave more mileage. But, gradually, the CNG consumption by automobile sector rose to such a level that supply of gas to our stoves got deficient. To solve this, our policymakers decided to allocate gas to CNG stations and households at different times in a day. However, gas is a natural resource that cannot be expanded or exploited beyond a certain limit. Therefore, people must adjust their demand patterns according to the availability of any natural resource.
Due to an unmanaged supply of vehicles, there has been increased traffic congestion on the roads, which has been fuelled by auto-financiers. We can no longer expand roads because it is impossible both financially and geographically. The question is: to what extent can we go on with building multi-story overhead roads, underpasses, ring roads, etc just to meet our obsession with the demand for automobiles? Excessive consumption of automobiles has created several problems such as poor traffic, air pollution and heavy import bill of petrol. There is an urgent need for policymakers to consider these excessive consumption patterns and implement a strategy to reduce consumption, and, instead, shift focus on human development in the country.
SK Abbas
Islamabad
Published in The Express Tribune, December 9th, 2021.
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