THIS refers to the report ‘Govt repays $3.8 billion in third quarter’ (May 13), according to which, Pakistan paid $4 billion interest on debt servicing in the first nine months of the current fiscal. This is a shock for the taxpayers.

What was more shocking was the fact that this amount represented more than half of the principal amount. In due course of time, the interest will totally blanket the principal, and we will be paying only the interest to sustain living.

The government keeps trumpeting that the current account deficit has come in the positive, whereas the financial health of the country continues to deteriorate fast. The national gross domestic product (GDP) has to grow by eight per cent for at least a decade for us to survive. This is the only hard fact that matters.

We keep requesting our friends in the international community to roll over their deposits, which we then show as our foreign exchange reserves. This in no way helps the economy.

The large-scale manufacturing (LSM) sector is showing a negative growth for long even though LSM is the engine of small and medium enterprises. This, in turn, implies that the industrial sector overall is dying.

In agriculture, the cotton crop this year has been a disaster. So, do we actually know where we are headed? Not in the right direction, for sure.

And, yet, the government has increased the salaries and perks of parliamentarians, judges, bureaucrats, etc. Who is paying for all this? Indeed, the taxpayer does.

Zafar Hasan Khan
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2025