According to newspaper reports, the World Bank has earmarked $410 million for Pakistan to support its economic reforms programme under the development policy credit. The government, however, is looking for $500 million to carry out its programme. The people are watching the political and economic developments and are dismayed over the current state of affairs. It seems the government has no plan and no direction to streamline the economy and remove the bottlenecks in its way. The foreign exchange reserves, on which the government is thumping its chest, are incompatible with the volume of the gross domestic product. Indirect and additional taxes are increasing and the government still has not been satiated with the additional revenues it collects on one pretext or the other. Instead of creating job opportunities for the working classes, the government is banking on a policy which produces more beggars than workers. Irony is that the programme is being appreciated at the private and official level and the World Bank is going to launch it in other countries too.
The country is already saturated with foreign loans which are being taken one after another and the day is not far off when money equal to the country’s GDP will go in debt servicing. The government is already taking loans on higher markup rates to return installments of the loans. A World Bank official has commended the success of the Benazir Income Support Programme and it going to replicate it in Egypt. The foreign lending agencies need clients and third world countries are the best option for their business. One fails to understand why the government wants to take loan to spend it in non-development sectors. A major chunk of the money allegedly goes to the undeserving people and the amount paid to the deserving class is also insufficient to do any good to them. Various teams of world financial institutions are busy in making plans to identify weak areas in developing economies to offer them the loans on hefty markup rates.
A political government is in the office and a businessman is the prime minister. The country is still lagging behind the regional economies and it is not something to be proud of. The country is facing energy crisis, political chaos and security situation. The present government inherited all the three problems from the previous governments, but the present leadership requires to streamline the affairs. We are living in the age of science and technology and only solution to the problem is to make the knowledge as the basis of economy. Until we change the direction of the economy, the nation will continue to receive tailored programmes made by the foreign agencies.
