ALL is not as gloomy as it might appear. Investor confidence might be plummeting and the country’s savings rate may be the lowest in the region.

We might be slipping further in competitive rankings, and the outlook of our credit rating may be hanging by a thread tethered to the IMF. But our consumers are amongst the most confident in the world.

“Pakistani consumers are generally optimistic” finds a report by the research company Nielson. The State Bank’s own consumer confidence index reports a rising score between July last year and this year. Given that wage levels have been stagnant over this time period, while inflation has hovered around 8pc, these results can be a little puzzling.

How are people spending more when they are earning less? The erudite find answers in the parallel economy, the so-called informal sector, which perhaps surged while the rest of the economy barely moved at a rate of 4.1pc. The key word here is ‘perhaps’, because there is no reliable way of knowing for sure what is going on in the informal sector.

But to those less encumbered by the methodological baggage of the erudite, no evidence is required beyond what a pair of eyes and ears can provide.

Perhaps Pakistanis are spending more today because they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. And the less they know about the shape of tomorrow, the more likely they are to use it all up today.

Saving and investment are for fools and squirrels when you live in a present, where tomorrow always falls in a faraway land. Here it’s all about the quick score and flaunting what you have.

Let others worry about sending a mission to Mars; we can simply announce a housing colony up there and start trading plot files right away. So through all the turbulence, let us rejoice over the wind in our sails that has kept us in such fickle stead through the fiercest of storms — and let a million malls blossom.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2014