IMF conditionalities

The recent approval of $1.2 billion in IMF funding provides some vindication for the government, as it proves that the country is moving in the right direction and abiding by the terms of the $7 billion bailout package. But while stabilising the teetering economy, achieving a primary fiscal surplus and rebuilding foreign exchange reserves are all genuine achievements of the sitting dispensation, the slate of 11 new loan conditions — bringing the total to 64 — should not be met with defiance and indignation, but with profound national introspection. The real issue is not the IMF's demands, but the chronic domestic failures that make them necessary.

It is a national embarrassment that our economic sovereignty must be repeatedly negotiated in Washington. For decades, we have cycled through IMF programmes, treating symptoms while ignoring the disease - a system where every policy seems to be designed to first protect elite interests, much akin to the worst aspects of trickle-down economics, wherein the rich are effectively subsidised by the state to support dubious claims that their wealth will make it downstream to the poor, rather than being funneled abroad.

The IMF's latest conditions are offensive only in that these are things we should have done ourselves several years ago. Public asset declarations for senior bureaucrats, action plans against corruption in ten high-risk departments, and the breakup of the elite-captured sugar cartel are not foreign impositions, but basic pillars of a functional state that we have failed to erect.

The IMF estimates that tackling elite privilege could boost Pakistan's GDP by over 5%, which is in itself reason enough to follow through. Inefficiencies, corruption and mismanagement in these problem areas have cost taxpayers billions of rupees and also taken a heavy non-monetary toll on the country. The path forward requires reforms. Who orders them is not important. Effective implementation is.