Onus on incoming govt to meet economic, energy challenges

Speakers say increasing political will, social accountability key to future stability.


Our Correspondent April 26, 2013
Experts reccomended displaying political will and social accountability, deregulating the energy sector, widening the tax net and avoiding blame games. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD:


Experts offered solutions to overcome Pakistan’s economic and energy crises at a discussion forum on Thursday, but only after they were done painting a grim picture of the country’s past and present.


The event, titled “What the People Want,” was organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with South Asian Free Media Association (Safma).

Displaying political will and social accountability, deregulating the energy sector, widening the tax net and avoiding blame games were among the recommendations put forth by the panel of speakers and discussants.

SDPI Executive Director Abid Qayyum Suleri said the next elected government had to understand the origins of the energy crisis instead of shifting the blame onto previous governments.

He also recommended reforms for the inefficient public sector enterprises and called for an end to the Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) culture.

SROs allow bureaucrats to bypass the elected assemblies to amend laws, a mechanism that enables the former to serve their own interests.

SDPI Deputy Director Dr Vaqar Ahmed said the business community was the only pressure group that could speak out against power sector problems.

Ahmed said a broader civil society movement incorporating academics and the media was required to hold the government accountable for the energy crisis.

He presented 10 energy sector recommendations for the incoming government, including a revisit to the previous government’s Integrated Energy Plan 2010-2025, deregulating the power sector and bringing the centralised energy apparatus under authority.

The recommendations were preceded by a dismal story of Pakistan’s economic performance during the past five years.

Suleri said weak governance, poorly conceived tax policies and the power sector crisis had led to the country’s “weak fiscal health.”

He lamented the poor GDP growth rate, currently at three per cent, and said the existing foreign exchange reserves could barely finance one and a half month’s worth of imports.

“I think that the caretaker government will have to start negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout,” he said.

Suleri pointed out that the country’s fuel mix had become increasingly dependent on expensive imported oil and that citizens were paying more for per unit electricity than the Pakistani rupee equivalent in other countries.

“The whole paradigm of our economic and energy growth is flawed. It is non-friendly both for users and economically,” he said.

According to an SDPI survey, the government was doling out around US$70 million per day in per unit subsidies, of which less then seven per cent had reached citizens below the poverty line.

Journalist Mubarak Zeb Khan said despite identifying three million tax evaders,
the Federal Board of Revenue was reluctant to take any action.

The Express Tribune’s Executive Editor Muhammad Ziauddin, who moderated the discussion, said the panelists had painted a scary and bleak, yet accurate, picture of Pakistan’s economy.

“We’re in a mess. All the instruments of governance have been wrong,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2013.

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