When Javed Burki, the retired federal secretary, was arrested a couple of months ago, there was much speculation over the reasons. According to press reports, the reason given by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was that in Burki's capacity as chairman of the Pakistan Automobile Corporation (PACO) over fifteen years ago, he had mismanaged an order to build Yasub trucks for the Pakistan army, thereby causing a loss of millions to the exchequer.

Apparently, instead of using PACO facilities, he joined some other public and private sector companies in setting up a new firm to handle the project. While there is a passing allegation that he had benefited personally from this arrangement, the thrust of the charges seems to focus on Burki's decision to develop and manufacture the trucks in a newly created facility. Apparently this delayed the project and caused cost-overruns that made the new trucks too expensive to be viable.

Now let me make it clear that while I have met Burki a few times, he is by no means a friend. However, those who have worked with him swear that he is honest to an 'irritating degree'. He may be arrogant and abrasive, but in my thirty years in government service, I have never heard anybody lay the charge of corruption at his door. Those who have served with him say that he takes decisions quickly and delegates work without hesitation.

The whole incident raises a number of questions that the government needs to answer. Firstly, what was the need to manufacture our own trucks when these are available around the world? There is no way we could have manufactured rugged, heavy-duty trucks more cheaply than those being produced by established American, European and Japanese firms. If the priority was to make the army less dependent on imports, why was the Yasub project based on imported gear-boxes and other key components?

Clearly, there was little economic justification for the scheme. Years later, the Auditor-General of Pakistan did a performance review of the abandoned project and quantified the huge losses that the exchequer (and thus the taxpayer) had sustained through this hare-brained project, and it seems that a scapegoat had to be found. Obviously, it would have been unthinkable to pin the blame on the generals who had the brainwave to start with.

I spoke to a respected financial expert who was a member of the PACO board when the decision to set up an entity outside the government was taken. According to him, the reasons Burki presented were weighty and cogent and the board had no hesitation in approving his proposal to set up a new company. For one, the PACO units at the time did not have the capacity or the facilities to build the Yasub, and given the long delays built into government procurement procedures, Burki as the chief executive felt he would make quicker progress through a private firm that was created for the exclusive purpose of manufacturing this truck.

It is entirely possible that another civil servant would have played it safe and taken another decision. But the point is that Burki was responsible for implementing a decision taken by the government, right or wrong, and he took a certain view of how it should be carried out. Over fifteen years later, he has been jailed for something he did in good faith. What kind of signal is the government sending out to civil servants?

As it is, decision-making in our bureaucracy is not renowned for its speed. By throwing an officer into jail for decisions taken years ago on the basis of the facts then available, the government is ensuring that nobody will decide on anything at all, pass the buck and refuse to commit their signature to any proposal for fear of future accountability.

I am not for a moment suggesting that past cases of corruption be closed. However, here we have a decision that cost the exchequer a large amount because it was connected to an unviable project based a poor concept. In my years in government, I must have authorized the sale and purchase of goods, services and financial instruments worth billions of rupees for various organizations I was serving at the time.

My decisions were based on the information I had at the time as well as on my belief that the rates I was closing the transactions at were the best available. If somebody were to come along years later and say that if I had waited a day before buying or selling such and such commodity or share or bond, I could have saved or made the government such and such an amount, there is little I could say in my defence. But the reality is that under these circumstances, decision-making would grind to a halt.

Let us extend this argument to the non-financial, policy area. If civil servants can be held accountable for alleged errors of judgment years afterwards, how about looking for authors of misguided policies that not only cost the exchequer billions, but cost lives as well as friends and influence? How about our disastrous Afghanistan policy for example?

For years we backed the Taliban at a huge cost, but then had to make a U-turn. Now we are stuck with the spillover effect with jihadis running wild all over the country. We are also branded as exporters of terrorism, thanks to our Kashmir policy, and nobody is willing to visit our shores, let alone investing in Pakistan. So who's responsible and accountable for this mess?

How far back are we going to go in this witch-hunt? In a country as mismanaged and poorly governed as Pakistan, there is no shortage of victims. With the advantage of hindsight and audit reports, it is easy to sit in judgment over somebody who took a decision in good faith years ago. However, this kind of retroactive second-guessing carries a cost.

An entrepreneur friend of mine based in London sets up projects in different parts of the world and last year he was discussing a proposal with the relevant ministry in Islamabad. After the elections, he made contact with the new minister and was shocked when faced with the demand to hand over details of any bribes he had paid so that this information could be passed on to NAB. Not having paid anybody anything, my friend backed off and has dropped the project, which came with foreign financing. He has since given up the idea of doing any business in Pakistan.

By all means hold civil servants accountable, but not at the cost of new investments and economic development.