Our economy feels like a slow-motion plane crash

E very time there’s turbulence during a flight, I seek forgiveness for all my sins and pray to God that I’ll be a better human being if the plane lands safely. I promise to tell my loved-ones how much I love them. I also pray that the pilot is able to safely land the plane. Watching the Pakistani economy nosedive these days feels like being a part of a slow-motion plane crash. Everyone is praying. Can feel the gravity and sense of impending doom.

I scroll the news first thing every morning for some good news on the economy. I pray for the pilot. But then I see the pilot too is busy praying himself and blaming the previous pilot, versus actually taking charge and steering us home. That’s what makes me lose all hope. Ishaq Dar, our pilot, has hijacked the Pakistani economy and held it hostage to his fetish for artificially propping up the rupee’s exchange rate versus the dollar.

Toyota is suspending production, factories are shuttering operations and importers can’t get their LCs opened due to arbitrary quotas. But all is well in the land of the pure because the rupee isn’t devaluing. Inflation is skyrocketing and Pakistan is quickly running out of raw materials for export and pharmaceutical industries. IMF is refusing to play ball with Dar and no foreign friends are raining in the dollars. What’s the plan out of this? We have none except keeping the dollar artificially pegged.

What’s remarkable is that we were told this is the most experienced pilot in the country, with a knack for turning around a nose diving economy. What’s remarkable is that Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz invested their personal political capital to remove Miftah Ismail and install Ishaq Dar. Aag lagi hai basti mein, aur Dar Sahab abhi bhi apni masti mein hein. Dar’s fetish for keeping the rupee artificially overvalued versus the dollar isn’t new. It resulted in a $20 billion current account deficit in 2018.

An artificially high rupee meant it was cheaper to import things than to produce them in Pakistan or export goods. Hence, our industry hollowed out, exports actually declined during PML-N’s last tenure and imports we couldn’t afford thrived, bringing us to the verge of bankruptcy when PTI took over. We are now about to watch this bad Lollywood movie on repeat, while holding onto the edge of our seats. This isn’t just mis-governance, it’s criminal. The pilot, in charge of the nose diving plane, is busy blaming the pilot who flew this plane last. Even if it’s the fault of the last guy, you’re the one in the cockpit now and need to get over yourself to help land us home.

There are 220 million people on this plane and we can all feel this slowmoving plane crash. Not to mention the fact that you hijacked the plane from the last pilot because you explicitly said you’re a better pilot. Perhaps the real fault lies with the passengers, who should have mobilised when the early signs of bad governance were visible. Take the floods as a microcosm of this flight and fight between pilots. Compare how PTI’s government managed Covid-19 to how PDM’s government has managed the floods. Covid-19 was a once in a century health emergency and Asad Umar’s NCOC used data and transparency to allocate limited health resources, deliver emergency cash transfer via Ehsaas and use a smart lockdown strategy.

Meanwhile, there has been no sustained or systemic effort by the PDM government to meaningfully help flood victims and refugees. Instead, these refugees are leveraged as natural disaster porn to raise more dollars from the international community to keep the rupee artificially pegged. The strength of a currency is an outcome of how well an economy is managed but Dar appears to believe that it’s an input to how well an economy can be managed.

You can’t keep the rupee propped up at the expense of an economy shutting down factories, firing labour and skyrocketing inflation. That’s the opposite of managing an economy well. But this is the man we have as Finance Minister today and it tells us everything we need to know about this government’s competence. The pilot is actively crashing the plane and there’s nothing we can do about it.