The previous PMLN government
has left Pakistan in a mess. It was prone to bad governance and poor policy
making which had wrecked the country’s economy. An example of bad governance was
the constant downward revision of tax targets by the previous PMLN government.
On April 29, 2017, the Federal Finance Minister had announced that the fiscal
year’s tax target of Rs3.621 trillion had been revised downwards to Rs3.5
trillion tax. This wasn’t the first time such a downward revision had been made.
Saudi Arabia had given a $1.5 billion grant to Pakistan three years ago, which
remained unutilized till April 29, 2017 when the federal finance minister
announced that the Nawaz Government would set up a Pakistan Infrastructure Bank
with the help of the World Bank and others. Much earlier in April 2017, the FBR
had admitted to a revenue collection shortfall of Rs100 billion. Not only had
the FBR then been holding back refunds to the tune of Rs200 billion, there were
also off-budget deficits that had then amounted to over Rs400 billion. Then the
real budget deficit had been projected to hit 6% of the GDP as opposed to the
budgeted fiscal deficit limit of 3.8% of the GDP. The budgetary deficit at this
level was not sustainable, Farrukh Saleem, a noted economist had then argued
that “there are five logical consequences: additional debt, higher taxes, higher
debt payments, higher rates of interest and higher rates of inflation.
Unfortunately, our future will have all five: additional debt, higher taxes,
higher debt payments, higher rates of interest and higher rates of inflation”.
Another example of bad governance was the persistent problem of circular debt.In
2013, the last PMLN government had paid off a mammoth Rs480 billion outstanding
circular debt. By March 2017, circular debt had once again reached Rs414
billion. In early May 2018 it reached a staggering Rs1,000 billion which was
considered as a grave threat to the economy. The unaddressed circular debt had
caused power outages in the summer which was contrary to the claims of the last
PMLNgovernment of production of electricity upto 25,000 MW, more than the total
demand.The chronic circular debt had affected the government to buy fuel
resulting in a loss of around Rs400 billion to the industrial sector. The PMLN
government had failed to carry out any fundamental energy sector reforms at all.
Undoubtedly, the PMLN government also faced a credibility problem because of a
lack of transparency. Previously, there had been some muted criticism of the
CPEC because it suffered from lack of transparency. The official website
contained just a list of projects but not enough details about them. This
paucity of information about CPEC was bewildering, to say the least.
The need for greater financial transparency was then felt so that CPEC-related
changes in the total debt of Pakistan could be properly studied, and correct
policy recommendations could be derived to ease the debt burden. Meanwhile,
Pakistan’s emphasis on coal-fired power was also criticized. It was argued that
the CPEC need not convert Pakistan into an environmental wasteland. The country
did not need to dirty its energy landscape with these plants. While, China
itself was phasing out coal. .
Pakistan was now facing a very serious current account deficit crisis. Earlier,
in 2013 when the PMLN government came to power the current account deficit was
$2bn a year. Today, the current account deficit had increased to a staggering
$2bn a month. Asad Umar, future finance minister said on August2018 that this
was a 12-fold increase and was unsustainable. “Given that, the most urgent
action required of the government will be to deal with this crisis.”
Today, Pakistan’s current account deficit had increased to an shocking $18
billion. Meanwhile, the foreign currency reserves were only enough to cover less
than two months of imports.
Earlier, in 2017the debt burden carried by Pakistan had reached levels which had
then aroused concern in the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the IMF. In the
previous fiscal year (2017-18), the budget deficit had increased to 6.8% of GDP
or Rs2.3 trillion.In absolute terms, it was the highest-ever budget deficit
recorded in Pakistan’s history. The previous PMLN government had set the budget
deficit target at 4.1% of GDP, which had been breached by a wide margin.
Historically, the budget deficit and current account deficit were major reasons
behind seeking bailout packages from the IMF.For this year, the last parliament
had approved a budget deficit target of 4.9% of GDP or Rs1.9 trillion. But, the
initial trends were not positive. The budget deficit in the first month of the
new fiscal year was close to Rs150 billion or 0.4% of GDP, significantly higher
than the one recorded in the same month of the last fiscal year. Higher interest
payments were the main reason for excessive spending in July. Interest payments
in July alone had amounted to two-thirds of the total spending, indicating that
controlling current expenditures would be an uphill task for the PTI government.
The last National Assembly had sanctioned Rs1.62 trillion for debt servicing in
the ongoing fiscal year and about 15% of that has already been consumed in a
single month. Meanwhile, the country’s foreign currency reserves were expected
to again fall below $9 billion mark by the end of September, even after Pakistan
had secured a $2 billion official inflow from China and arranged $1.4 billion
commercial loans over the past two months. One of the most important failures of
the previous PMLN government was the inability tomeaningfully increase the
tax-to-GDP ratio which was 10% in 2013 to only to 12.5% in 2017.
Today, the Pakistani rupee is shaky, the tax collection is miserably low. In
2017 , less than a million people had paid any taxes. Meanwhile, the country was
only recentlyreturned to the FATF “gray list”for failing to control terrorism
financing, which now made foreign transactions more complex and expensive.
Only 2% Pakistanis pay income taxes which was shameful, to say the least. Plus,
the economy was expected to grow by a meager 4 % barely enough to cater to the
rapid population increase witnessed in the country. Undoubtedly, Pakistan’s
economy was facing serious challenges and a crisis persisted. Although since
2005 the GDP had been growing an average 5 percent a year, it was not enough to
keep up with the fast population growth. The country’s population was now over
208 million and Pakistan was now the sixth most populated country in the world,
its growth rate is reported at 2.03%, which is the highest of the SAARC nations.
The population was projected to reach 210 million by 2020 and to double by 2045.
Pakistan’s current GDP was only $313 billion. Thus, the economy of Pakistan was
entering a crisis
Today, Pakistan was political unstable because of poor governance, widespread
corruption and lack of law enforcement which had also hampered private
investment and foreign aid.Pakistan had a weakened society given to intolerance,
extremism and violence. It was an irony that Pakistan is one of the strongest
nations in the world as far as military might be concerned yet considerably weak
as far as societal and economic development indicators are concerned. Pakistan
has achieved a lot in the military field and needs to consolidate its technical
accomplishments in building an awesome nuclear arsenal quickly enough.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's leadership had failed to make the nation strong and united
to face the terrorism challenges. The national leadership was too much focused
on the acquisition of a military edge over India considered as a mortal enemy of
Pakistan.
Pakistan was faced with horrendous situation inside the country as rapid
population growth was fueling a massive rural to urban migration, strain on the
cities, and massive environmental degradation. People were suffering from poor
environment, lack of social services and neglect of state institutions to
respond to the situation in any coherent manner. Bad governance was the norm,
not the exception in state institutions. The poverty gap was striking and was
widening in many areas of the country. Pakistan was deficient in governance
matters as public services were inadequate and there was immense poverty in the
country. The Human Development Index (HDI) was extremely low in Pakistan. The
HDI was devised and launched in 1990 and was a statistic which ranked countries
into four tiers of human development based on indicators like life expectancy,
education and per capita income. A higher lifespan, higher level of education
and higher GDP per capita results in a country scoring higher HDI. Earlier, the
2015 Human Development Report (HDR), by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
declared that with an HDI value of 0.538, Pakistan ranks 147 out of 188
countries and territories. Pakistan ranks 121st out of 155 countries in terms of
its Gender Inequality Index: only 19.3 percent of women reach secondary
education compared to 46.1 percent of men, while female participation in the
labor market is 24.6 percent compared to 82.9 percent for men. Pakistan ranked
again at 147 among 188 countries on HDI in 2016 as released by the UNDP.
Pakistan ranked low on human development indicators because of severe neglect of
public health and education. There was an urgent need for the new PTI government
to invest in early childhood years through quality schooling, nutrition and
healthcare.
It was estimated that there were nearly 25 million children out of school in the
country. In Pakistan alone, 800,000 children die annually, more than 35% from
malnutrition. With the population growing at the annual rate of almost 2%, the
new PTI government must campaign for smaller families with greater vigor across
the country and invest in accelerated family planning and female literacy to
lower the fertility rate. With its pulse on economic development policies, the
new PTI government must realize that investment and sound policies in health,
education and good governance are the only way to create a quality workforce.
There were 400,000 starving children in Thar and despite international food
assistance, malnutrition had deplorably increased in Pakistan.
Plan of Action of the New PTI Government
The PTIgovernment must prepare a Three-Year Action Plan with input from both
federal and provincialgovernments. A council be established for the purpose to
be headed by the prime minister and including several key federal ministers. The
chief minsters of the provinces should also be part of the council. The council
should be supported by a premierthink tank. The first draft of the plan be
prepared by November 2018. After extensive deliberations thefinal plan be
approved by February 2019. Pakistan must follow the Indian model of such
planning. It must reconsider the tools and approaches to the very
conceptualization of the process of development. The plan must offer proposals
for changes in policy within the stipulated period. It be assumed that most of
the projects would indeed be completed in the three-year period, the
implementation of the remaining would be continued in the next years. The aim of
the plan is to offer a holistic development approach requiring all state
departments and agencies to simultaneously progress. Also, the present the plan
with great precision utilizing the Next Steps approach. The approach is simple
common sense and consists of four logical steps.
Step 1: Assessment of current state through a detailed examination of each
sector’s standing and review of shortcomings.
Step 2: Develop a roadmap by identifying the future state and the strategy to
attain it.
Step 3: Implementation through detailed Action Plans and mechanisms and
processes necessary for them.
Step 4: Feedback mechanism. Evaluation of the program by a third party.
The plan would encompass to cover all govt ministries, attached departments, and
agencies. There are 972 government institutions in the country, according to the
State Bank of --Pakistan. Plus, there are now 118 non-financialinstitutions in
the country. The PTI government can begin with restructuring of the federal
government by merging and consolidation into the following ministries:
1. Ministry of Agriculture
2. Ministry of Commerce and Industry
3. Ministry of Communications
4. Ministry of Culture
5. Ministry of Defense
6. Ministry of Education and Skill Development
7. Ministryof Energy
8. Ministry of Housing and Urban Development
9. Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
10. Ministry of Finance
11. Ministry of Foreign Affairs
12. Ministry of Public Enterprises
13. Ministry of Postal Services
14. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
15. Ministry of Human Resource Development
16. Ministry of National Security
17. Ministry of Law and Justice
18. Ministry of Transportation
19. Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs
20. Ministry of Science and Technology
21. Ministry of Shipping and Ports
22. Ministry of Tourism
23. Ministry of Water Resources
24. Ministry of Women and Child Development
25. Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports
26. Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication
27. Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan
28. Ministry of National Food Security and Research
29. Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination
30. Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development
31. Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform
32. Ministry of Privatization
33. Ministry of Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony
34. Ministry of Statistics
A scrutiny of the entire federal government is needed now. Proper planning can
result in rapid development of Pakistan. Much depends on the PTI government
taking up the challenge immediately upon assuming office.