Why does Pakistan Fail at Making Successful Reform?

By -


Reform remains an elusive and little understood concept in Pakistan. The word is seldom used on TV. It is used even less in the cabinet and official forums. Even academics shy away from the subject. Donors now and again will talk of it but with the throwaway remark that “we do not have to reinvent the wheel”, “we know what is to be done”, and “all we have to do is import best practice”! So they set it up in an action matrix which is a template from some advanced country. More often than not that reform is never completely implemented and kind of gets stuck in the gullet of the country, probably doing more harm than good. As a case in point look at what happened to the electricity sector when we were merely following best practice mindlessly. For 20 years we have been paying the price of an inconclusive reform which has run into Billions of Dollars.
Yet no one really spends time trying to understand why Pakistan is such a laggard performer when it comes to reform. Donor contention is that we do not implement and that it is the lack of political will. Is that correct?

Let us set the record straight we have implemented a lot of items that the donor wanted. We privatized, opened out the economy, got rid of licensing, conducted tax reform have numerous projects for building governance, access to justice, education and many other development goals. We have built regulatory agencies like SECP, NEPRA, PEMRA. We have played with autonomy of the SBP.  Yet development has alluded us. 

On the other hand it is fairly visible to any one visiting Pakistan that the people are turning away from modernity and productivity. Society seems to be taking a turn towards fundamentalism and a cultural conservatism instead of modernity and creativity.

Surely this should be raising all kinds of flags and we should all be coming together to improve our understanding of reform and why it is unsuccessful or halfhearted. Blaming it on lack of political will is not enough. To my mind that is intellectually lazy and an easy out. Saves the people who design reforms from taking blame.   

Any ideas on the failure to make successful reform?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The insanity of Our Economic Policy

By -
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Einstein Pakistan is an IMF addict: we have had 12-13 IMF programs in the last 30 years and have spent more than 22 years in a program (more if you count program monitoring). So, what will change with another program? Will both Pakistan and IMF repeat the past and prove insanity as in Einstein’s maxim.  IMF gave us a clean bill of health about 2 years ago, yet we are in another BOP crisis. You can see the exchange rate collapsing. Will the doctor repeat the old medicine?   While policy, IMF and our policy remain engaged in a dismal dance, the economy beyond the control of the MOF chugs along creating a middle class.  People are largely better off despite the shenanigans of the trio (MOF, IMF and pundits). People have worked hard to build a life for themselves whether through migration or some trading and even informal work at home.  But then the trio (IMF, M...
Read more

Imperial Democracy

By -
Typically, ‘elected’ dynastic governments start to unravel by their third year thanks to a combination of incompetence and greed. It is then that the rumour of a technocratic setup starts and politicians start to fan it. Recently, government officials came out with statements to the effect that the constitution does not allow for a technocratic setup and that there is no room for technocrats in Pakistan. The issue of technocrats really needs careful analysis here. Why is there a demand for technocracy? People repeatedly see that elected governments are not delivering governance and good public service. Instead they slip into whimsical, ‘kitchen cabinet’ government style-where an inner circle of the unelected starts to take arbitrary decisions. The prime minister wants to run the country in imperial fashion and ministers close to him act like imperial lords by passing all laws. Rumours of corruption grow large. Dynastic ambitions reveal themselves in children being thrown into dec...
Read more

Austerity Pakistan 1: Should Tax/GDP ratio be our top priority?

By -
Austerity Pakistan 1 Should Tax/GDP ratio be our top priority? Decades of fund involvement has changed the economic narrative permanently in Pakistan. Before IMF involvement we used to talk of growth and investment; now everyone talks only of TAX/GDP ratio as if that will solve all problems of Pakistan. There was a time when national policy not only built institutions for economic growth such as the Planning Commission and governance infrastructure, government also engaged in developing social infrastructure through agencies such as Bureau of National Reconstruction (libraries) and National Film Development corporation. Now the national conversation seems to be dominated by the IMF requirement of ambitious fiscal targets based on increased tax collection and arbitrary expenditure cuts. Growth, employment and development are almost forgotten subjects. Even development donors such as World Bank, Asian Development Bank, DFID and USAID have nothing for growth and devel...
Read more