Swallowing the medicine

FODP nations make no bones about the fact that Pakistan needs to make more effort to usher in domestic reform.

The prescription is clear. The Friends of Democratic Pakistan, made up of a host of donor nations who met Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Brussels, made no bones about the fact that Pakistan needed to make more effort to usher in domestic reform as a means to give the economy a boost and help with flood recovery. Almost exactly the same formula was suggested by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just days ago, who stated, without mincing words, that Pakistan’s elite needed to do more to help their own people. Pakistan – a patient which today seems at best to hover in and out of the Intensive Care Unit – really has no choice but to comply. There are no alternatives. The world has made it clear that Pakistan needs to generate its own resources and not depend on the generosity of people overseas, even while its own rich sit back to consume their lavish lunches and keep up a lifestyle that has remained unchanged from one disaster to the next.

The message delivered to Pakistan essentially means it must draw in more taxes. This, as we all know, means taxing agricultural land holdings so that the tax base can be widened. Mr Qureshi has agreed that this measure is urgently needed. While we focus on agricultural tax, it is also important that collection efficiency be improved given that many of the wealthiest – including industrialists – pay out little.

Sweeping reform is needed to change this. But Pakistan needs to see that the world is rapidly losing patience with it. The dependence on charity and goodwill must end. There has been a realisation that the country does have the ability to raise more resources on its own. Islamabad should remember that if it fails to do so, the hand-outs coming in will one day stop. It must therefore act immediately to put the begging bowl it holds out, apparently with little embarrassment, away into a drawer and find ways to ensure that the richest members of our own society also act as friends of a country that has given them a great deal.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2010.