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Showing posts from April, 2017

How do consultants, donors and Pakistani ministries solve problems?

The flood of 2010 showed me (I was Deputy Chairman of Planning then) how dysfunctional policy was in Pakistan and yet how good our administration was at handling crises. When the flood struck, our foreign office did not consult the key economic ministries but only with a few donors to make tall claims in the international arena. Speeches were made in the UN that we had suffered a loss north of $40 billion. Immediately, the Friends of Pakistan (FOP) forum was activated. At the Planning Commission, there was no such estimate and our people told me the loss was much lower. Upon checking I found that the FOP was a figment of our imagination. The group had met when the Zardari government came in and there was a sympathy for the new democracy and the memory of BB was fresh. Since then the pledges never materialised and the group did not want to operate outside the multilateral framework. Upon talking to both the Foreign ministry and foreign secretary, I leant that FOP was their economi