Without an attempt to address the fundamentals, our economy will not and cannot grow.
NEW YORK: Akmal Hussain’s article “Perspective for a policy review”, published December 13, talks about a ‘grand strategy’ needed to build a better future for the country which would include fundamental re-examination of the prevailing policy paradigms in the military, economic and social fields. But before we can tackle these policy prescriptions, we need to address the fundamentals first: the energy crisis; the circular debt; the security situation that has frightened domestic and foreign investors; corruption; political instability and uncertainty; bad governance and last, but not least, the mother of all evils: the budget.
Without an attempt to address the fundamentals, our economy will not and cannot grow. Given present constraints, the best we can achieve in growth is about three to four per cent per year, compared to a labour force growth of about 2.7 to three per cent per year.
Meekal Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2011.
