THE year 2022 is now firmly behind us — if only our economic troubles were too. The crises that gripped the country last year seem set to continue giving the country’s administrators a headache well into 2023. Despite the urgency with which course correction is needed, the decision-makers in Islamabad remain clueless about where or even when to begin their ‘bold’ and ‘difficult’ measures. Even the timid austerity measures announced in the last week of 2022 to cut down on consumption — which included the early closure of markets, among other things — remained unimplemented as we entered the new year. It just goes to show how deep the administrative paralysis goes.
“We’re hurting the country over petty politics … we are our own worst enemy,” incumbent Finance Minister Ishaq Dar complained recently, as the curtain fell on his largely unremarkable and quite possibly catastrophic first quarter as finance chief. He failed to acknowledge how his own ‘petty politics’ against Miftah Ismail had added considerable chaos to the system when the country had desperately needed continuity. But we digress. Mr Dar was commenting more generally about the blind zeal with which our political parties keep trying to take each other down. It is, indeed, true that the fate of the economy lies in our politicians’ hands, and none of them seems to have any serious understanding of how to handle this immense responsibility prudently. Be it Imran Khan slashing fuel prices in the midst of a commodity price supercycle or Mr Dar himself attempting to control exchange and interest rates in defiance of all logic — politicians across the divide have been more than willing to risk long-term economic stability if it means short-term political gains.
The worst manifestation of this type of politics is in the cynical protest movements we continue to see every time a government tries to make difficult but unavoidable decisions. Last year started with the PDM complaining about runaway inflation and announcing protest marches to pressurise the PTI government as the latter attempted to revive the IMF programme. The year ended with the roles reversed. The year 2023 lies ahead. Can we break the cycle and move on? With the politicians out of answers, the country will continue paying the cost of their follies. However, even now, a top-down realignment of Pakistan’s economic priorities can make the difficult path ahead more tolerable. For that, our politicians will first need to engage with the public through simplified but informed discourse on our economic choices. The cynicism with which economic policy is treated in media and political circles will need to be countered with reason and logic. Rather than vacuous party representatives, capable economists should be asked to handle the political debate. The concept of ‘relief’ must also change from meaning ‘handouts from the government’ to meaning ‘manageable benefits for those who deserve them most’. The old approach of throwing borrowed money at problems cannot work. Few are willing to subsidise our consumption with their dollars. Time to tighten the belt and fight our way back out of this hole.
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023
