A redesigned programme - Newspaper

The writer is a former member of the prime minister’s economic advisory council, and heads a macroeconomic consultancy based in Islamabad.
THE new finance minister has expressed exasperation at the conditionality of the ongoing IMF programme — Pakistan’s 23rd since 1950. The main thrust of the programme is focused on achieving a primary fiscal surplus that is consistent with a sustainable path of public debt; building external account buffers, and making the power sector financially viable. Prima facie, and in a high-level ‘strategic’ sense, the conditionality appears aligned with Pakistan’s main structural weaknesses.
That these weaknesses have persisted, and indeed worsened, over a period of four decades is testament to how comfortably numb Pakistan’s elites have been despite the country lurching from crisis to crisis. The country’s elites have been cushioned by external aid flows and their disinterest and inaction conditioned by strong policy capture; hence, they have demonstrated inertia and apathy of epic proportions for a protracted period. Even during (and in between) IFI-led reform programmes, a lack of ownership as well as understanding has been compounded by political and policy instability.

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