DURING the announcement of the economic survey this year, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had issued a somewhat sombre assessment of the current account deficit, while talking of the overall growth numbers that the economy has registered. This deficit, he said at the time, could grow to $8.3bn before the year ended — more than triple the figure it was last year. The announcement did not escape notice amidst all the good news that was being touted by the minister, when he spoke at length about the rebound in the growth rate of the economy, expected to reach 6pc by the end of next year. Throughout the year, he had dodged the growing alarms around the current account deficit, the very same indicator which eventually buried the short-lived growth boom of the Musharraf years. By May it appeared that the finance minister could no longer ignore the yawning deficit, and grudgingly acknowledged that there could be a problem here.

But even so, the current account deficit had already touched $9bn. The data for the period from July to May has only just been released by the State Bank, and it shows that the current account deficit stood at $8.9bn at the end of May — which was when Mr Dar gave his news conference on the economic survey. Considering that the deficit has been more than a billion dollars each for the months of April and May, the possibility that it could, in fact, cross the $10bn mark by the end of June cannot be ruled out. In less than one month, the finance minister’s reluctant acknowledgement of this growing gap has been overtaken by some hard facts. Realistically speaking, there is very little that one should expect this government to do to bring this situation under control. The economy will now be on autopilot as it flies into the strong headwinds of politics. We can only hope that it does not run out of fuel through it all.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2017