ISLAMABAD, July 11: The total estimated losses suffered by the masses due to wrong management policies, corruption and inefficiency of the government amounts to Rs3,000 billion per annum, said a former World Bank consultant, Dr Ali Sajid, here on Wednesday.

He was speaking at a seminar organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on “Why is Pakistan’s development a failure: a critical analysis of impeding factors”.

Dr Ali Sajid presented an analysis of the charge-sheet against the government and the policies pursued by the international financial institutions to the detriment of the common man.

The presentation was attended by some six participants and five journalists besides the staff of the SDPI which packed the conference room to make up for the thin attendance.

Identifying fault lines in various sectors of public administration, Dr Sajid said the total defaulted loans, written off loans and tax evasion amounted to Rs500 billion. Lack of accountability is the most critical single factor which encouraged economic agents to operate underground, he said.

He said the national exchequer lost an amount of Rs2 billion due to the ever increasing smuggling of spices and tea. Rampant smuggling severely damaged legal trade of spices and tea during the last fiscal year in absence of any check from law enforcement agencies, he said.

Dr Sajid said remittance worth 36.460 million pounds sterling for purchase of stores and repair was lying unspent in the Pakistan High Commission in London since 1995-96 due to the negligence of the officials concerned.

Pakistan, he said, had been told by international donors that almost half of the development budget was siphoned away and even the Social Action Programme (SAP) of $8 billion could not be saved from corrupt practices and gross misappropriation of funds.

On economic management, he said, Pakistan, with a poor record of achieving targets for decades, was plunging deeper and deeper into a bottom-less pit. Foreign loans are up from $6.341 billion in 1977 to $42 billion in 2001.

He said the credibility of the government was doubtful as the fiscal deficit reported in the Economic Survey was 5.7 per cent of the GDP for 2001-2002. However, he said, the finance minister in his budget speech reported the overall fiscal deficit at seven per cent. “Such occurrences make reliability of government statistics questionable,” he said.

Dr Sajid said the number of development projects either declined or stayed static, prices of essential items shot up, the net earnings of the common man lagged behind and poverty showed steep upward trends. Moreover, he said, during the last three years, gross fixed investment further declined from 15 per cent to 12.3 per cent of the GDP. The dream of export-led growth, he said, remained elusive while the export base continued to remain narrow and inelastic.

He said non-utilization of development funds of Rs25 billion during the current year had forced the government to pay special attention to capacity building of officials to efficiently execute development programmes.