A story of four meetings: same pipedreams?

Pakistan is caught in a dangerous tailspin, changing only for the worse, at war within and with hope for a promising future. A case in point is four major meetings — two recent ones taking place on September 3 and 4 in Karachi and Lahore respectively; and the other two in June 2021 and October 2019.

Common to them all was the chief of army staff (COAS). Then it was General Qamar Javed Bajwa and this time his successor, General Asim Munir. The core message from the three interactions between the two army chiefs and the businessmen hardly differed in content i.e. politicians are corrupt, bureaucracy is inefficient and the business community is the mainstay of the economy. We will try to facilitate business as much as possible in order to revive the economy. Radically revolutionary messaging indeed.

And — unsurprisingly — this was a one-way messaging only. The army chief speaking and promising while the business lords resonating demands — on all three occasions — that are anchored in a mindset that at best is called patronage-seeking at the expense of the hapless people of Pakistan. The visitors of GHQ and Corps Headquarters in Karachi hardly came up with their own proposals. They just wanted more facilitation.

Shabbar Zaidi, Asad Umar and a few others are witness to those long interactions at GHQ, which the businessmen wanted to use as a shortcut to extract their refunds, subsidies, rebates, etc. No suggestion at all about their own active contribution to improvement.

Those who had met Bajwa in 2019 included literally all the who’s who of Pakistan’s business and industry world. They had on both occasions converged on GHQ to convey to Bajwa their grievances, particularly during the June 2021 meeting, at a time when the entire world was reeling from the Covid-19 consequences. Wary of the bureaucracy, they had bypassed the civilian government and wanted the army chief to redress the complaints they had with the civilian bureaucracy.

With their complaints — refunds, rebates, loans, financial concessions, tepid response by the state machinery, etc — these businessmen wanted to highlight issues underlying the stagnating economy, risks of business closures, growing unemployment and loss of revenue to the government. Bajwa assured the businessmen army’s “complete support” for the economic uplift of the country and also floated the idea that an internal committee be formed comprising military officers to work on their complaints and their resolution.

The meeting in June 2021 had taken place — behind the back of the then Prime Minister — to the context of growing orders from abroad and the fact that the industrial sector had begun booming. Industries in Faisalabad, Sialkot, Gujranwala and Karachi were apparently working overtime to cope with the orders.

No surprise that the eventual GDP growth rate for fiscal year 2021-2022 turned out to be at least 6.2 per cent with record exports ($32 billion) and remittances ($31 billion). But just because the PDM leaders as well as their enabler had changed track, the only thing they had to sell to the public was a befooling false narrative.

Fast forward to September 2023. General Asim Munir, Gen Bajwa’s successor, was both the listener and lecturer. Across him sat the same club that has thrived off state patronage for decades but hardly stops wailing and complaining. The content of their talk remained the same: the state should step in to save the economy (read expedite the refunds, increase rebates, reduce power prices, etc) and we don’t trust the government machinery. Facilitate us.

A follow-up meeting was held on September 5 — again with the same patronage-addicted business community in attendance. FPCCI President Irfan Iqbal Sheikh, who claimed to represent over 250 national bodies, told the meeting that “the only logical, effective, swift and result-oriented solution to the menace of smuggling lies in eliminating smuggling networks at the country’s borders as those are the entry and exit points. There is no use in screening or monitoring the markets without having strict control at the borders.”

Interestingly, “smuggling” is the buzz word these traders, businessmen and importers have lapped as a sweet music to the ears of the army chief. Truck ki batti, as we say in our local parlance. And this way many of those present tried to deflect attention from real issues such as who actually benefits from “smuggling”.

Aren’t many of government and security institutions as well as traders themselves part of these smuggling cartels operating around border areas on land and sea?

Some questions that need to be asked of all those who attended these meetings between October 2019 and September 2023:

Did a single businessman, industrialist, exporter present in these meetings promise to bring home all the foreign exchange that they earn from exports? Did any of them offer to use their own dollars/forex for Letters of Credit instead of relying on the State Bank of Pakistan? Did any of them admit being part of the smuggling rackets that operate between Pakistan-Afghanistan and Iran (part of the problem)? Did someone among the audience admit to be part of the rackets that run under the pretext of the Afghan Transit Trade, and how they benefit from this by partnering with Afghan importers and their collective collusion with Ministry of Finance officials? Did anybody promise to stop doing over- and under-invoicing in their international trade — which is a usual practice to dodge authorities and pocket hefty profits?

Even if a few big businessmen and industrialists did come clean on the questions above, that would be the real beginning of the new journey. Who will take the lead is a billion dollar question. But one thing is evident: neither continued rent-seeking nor pipe-dreaming will save the economy’s slide.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2023.

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