The tax evasion monster

The World Bank president’s statement that Pakistan should ensure that it spends the aid money it is receiving transparently should shame government officials. But we doubt many of them care, for if this administration has shown one thing, it is that it has absolutely no shame in going around the world begging for money and being rebuffed. When it hits rock bottom, it brings out the pickaxes and keeps on digging. The PPP-led government’s lack of accomplishments in the economic realm is appalling. Its inability to collect taxes from the wealthiest of evaders suggests that there is nobody in Islamabad with a workable plan to run the economy. The international community has made it abundantly clear that they are tired of picking up the bill for the corrupt and slothful habits of the country's political, military and bureaucratic elite. Donors have constantly been clamouring for the wealthy to start paying their fair share and yet successive governments, whether they be civilian or military, continue to ignore the only sensible solution left available to them for raising revenues. International donors baulked at giving money to Pakistan even during the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history, the central bank is openly opposing the government’s fiscal policies and even Karachi’s bond market is calling the government’s bluff. And yet the administration continues, in the tradition of Nero, to play the fiddle while Rome burns.


Pakistanis have shown themselves to be remarkably sensitive to the world’s perception of them and yet our government seems to be unable to rouse itself to do anything to fix the problem. We would like to say this in absolute, unambiguous terms: the government has no choice. It must go after the country's wealthy tax evaders. Otherwise, we will continue to be lectured like schoolchildren by all and sundry global diplomats.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2010.