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FINANCE Minister Ishaq Dar’s promise in the annual budget of ushering in an era of recovery following a period of economic gloom, only deserves to be taken with a pinch of salt. Pakistan’s economy faces the twin challenges of low growth coupled with an ever-growing institutional crisis that continues to plague prospects for the foreseeable future. For Islamabad’s ruling policymakers, the solution for now appears to be that of throwing more money to tackle a recent downturn that left unattended will inevitably fuel political discontent. In the past, protesting farmers dumping truckloads of potatoes in central Lahore, though an unpalatable sight to the general public, had no immediate political effect.
But less than two years before the next parliamentary elections, a wake-up call across the corridors of power has thrown the political establishment to rush into action. Suddenly, the 60pc Pakistanis who gain their wages through crops have become more pertinent to official policymakers, possibly overshadowing the stakeholders with an interest in fancy and wasteful schemes like metro buses or fast urban trains.
A drop in prices of chemical fertilisers and electricity tariff in the budget, hardly an act of magnanimity by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s regime, is driven more by Pakistan’s expected political trends. Come 2018, last year’s crash in cotton production and the first-ever contraction in agricultural output in over two decades, left unattended will translate into votes lost for the PML-N.
The gap left behind in the government’s agriculture-related response, however, smacks of a wider problem. Pakistan remains afflicted by the worst challenge surrounding its institutions, amplified over the decades and still left unattended. In agriculture, from the high corridors of so-called research institutions in Islamabad to the extension services across the districts, dysfunctionality remains the daily norm.
Farmers have had practically no help.
It’s not surprising that farmers in financial ruin, notably those already on low incomes, have practically no help from the community of research outfits created in the name of key crops. And similarly, anecdotal evidence suggests that the guys in the districts employed under the agriculture extension services, remain squarely dedicated to supporting those with political clout. It is obvious that the providers of such services have no time for common farmers.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s rapidly eroding canal irrigation system suffers from growing inefficiency, thanks to decades of neglect and adding to the multiple maladies surrounding agriculture. For the tail-enders (water users at the tail-end of canals) life without adequate water is a given, year after year.
Beyond just Pakistan’s rural belt, the institutional crisis has a much wider dimension. In the past year, the mere fact of the ‘baboos’ at the Federal Board of Revenue in Islamabad repeatedly failing to make a tax return filing system work, was a widely noticed case in point. The authorities were subsequently forced to delay the deadline for filing tax returns at least five times, setting a new record in the declining standards of the government. Unsurprisingly, the joke among Pakistan’s few taxpayers was a telling one; ‘May be the government aims to collect last years’ taxes along with the next year’s tax — two years in one go’.
The institutional crisis at the heart of Pakistan’s ailing economy indeed has a philosophical and political dimension. Budget-making was once a well-thought-out exercise that not only took account of trends in previous years but also set the pace for the year ahead and beyond.
And across Pakistan, consultations with key stakeholders in different sectors were carried out by some of the country’s best-respected civil servants. Today, the paucity of talent is such that the finance secretary, an able survivor of many regimes, remains in place due to his so-called ‘technocratic’ credentials.
The government’s failure to find even a single able civil servant to fill the slot raises two equally compelling questions: either no one with the calibre to run the finance secretary’s office can be found among the senior-most civil servants or more likely continuously blind loyalty to one set of rulers after another has become more pertinent to the job than talent. In each case, the answer must add to prevailing doubts over the future of the finance establishment.
Going forward, the conclusion of an IMF loan programme this year will eventually see Finance Minister Dar and his team patting themselves on the back. For a country where most IMF programmes in the past have collapsed prematurely, this may bring momentary joy.
And yet, Pakistanis across the rank and file will be left with many compelling questions over their future. The most pertinent among these will inevitably relate to the sustainability of present-day policies. As the Sharif government, recently stung by the Panama leaks, raises its spending on those it chose to neglect before, will this trend remain sustainable in future? Going by the past, the answer must be in the non-affirmative.
The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2016
