ISLAMABAD, May 30: Bounded by the Structural Adjustment Programme dictated by the International Monitory Fund (IMF), the government cannot be expected to present a pro-poor budget, economic analysts said here on Monday. Speaking at a seminar on the budgetary process in Pakistan at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), the experts also cast doubts on the government’s claim that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 8.35 per cent in the outgoing year.

Asim Sajjad of the People’s Rights Movement (PRM) said the country’s economic structure was built in a manner which weakened the regulatory and administrative roles of the public sector. Thus it encouraged foreign investors to exploit and control the country’s resources.

The structure encouraged privatization of profitable and sensitive organizations like Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) despite strong opposition of the workers.

He warned that the haste with which the government was privatizing major public-sector organizations would trigger economic crisis similar to the ones recently witnessed in Mexico, Bolivia and some other backward economies which took dictation from advanced countries.

Two-thirds of the national budget goes to defence and debt servicing but no debate is permitted on them. The budget, he said, was prepared on colonial model by technocrats with almost no feedback from political parties and various unions.

Mr Sajjad said the bubble of the much-trumpeted bullish trend in the stock exchanges burst amid corporate scandals and speculative trading. The government seemed helpless or unwilling to detect the stock market scandals.

Dr Nawaz Hakro of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Department of Economics, said Pakistan’s economic development was unique in the sense that acute unemployment/poverty and high growth rate existed here side by side.

According to him independent sources put Pakistan’s GDP growth around seven per cent and not at 8.35 per cent as claimed by the government. Poverty was so severe in Pakistan that it rendered the claim of high growth rate meaningless, particularly when inflation was running in double digits and more than 40 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line.

Executive Director, Lok Sanch, Dr Shahid Zia highlighted the backwardness of the agriculture sector and its dependence on the export of some major crops like cotton and rice. He said agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, was allocated the leftovers.