With a little help from our friends

It has been quite a tricky proposition to arrange stopgap financing worth $2-3 billion from friendly countries. This is a major headache for the ruling PTI in the aftermath of increasing scarcity of dollar-dominated injections from international donors.. One has to feel for our finance managers who continue to wrestle against the most daunting odds. They would need all the help they could get. Economic conditions could not have been more dire than the murky financial weather usually is before an IMF bailout can be approved. In times of trouble, Pakistan has to pull as many rabbits out of its hat as it can find earnest friends. Most of these friendships need to be cultivated over a considerable period of time to be of any lingering value to the country. To profit from such largess there would have to be a certain measure of reciprocity and mutual love and respect. So far, however, the response has hardly been encouraging but in the course of the coming weeks we would need substantial help to dig ourselves of the economic hole we find currently ourselves in. In this age of fleeting friendships, it is extremely hard to sift out the true from the toxic. We have seen with much consternation and alarm how loan flows from multilateral creditors, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank shrank to unbelievable levels during the current fiscal year due to our supposed failure to clear the procedural hurdles for obtaining approvals from relevant forums during the recent political transition. Already, gloomy Cassandras are predicting a severe economic crisis — not without reason though. Even if the IMF package comes through within the next six to eight weeks our foreign reserves’ position would not have to be evaporating quite so fast. So another SOS has to be sent out to China and our Gulf allies. There’s not a second to lose. Acting in lightning quick style will save us blushes later. However, if we ever want to come out looking like a self-respecting, independent-minded country, we will have to learn how to cast away the crutches and craft more robust and sustainable economic policies.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2018.

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