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| Finance ministry – some rejoinder! |
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Saturday, June 27, 2009
It was the suspicious Red Indian chief who, having heard the white man give him a cock and bull story, shook his head and remarked, 'white man speak with forked tongue.' Mr M Khalid Sarwar, director-general media, ministry of finance, Islamabad, is unlikely to be white, although he has had to labour over a set of white lies as he has sought to put my column "Insulting the people" June 21 into the rubbish bin with his reply published in The News on June 25.
I am no economist and neither I am very good at lying or fudging the facts. Every time I have tried to do that, I have been caught almost immediately but if you are one of the many mandarins at the Min of F you have little choice but to defend your masters as and when they are asked awkward questions. I am also very poor at the highly lucrative technique of manufacturing convoluted arguments, a task in which many Pakistanis, bureaucrats especially of the Civil Serpent Society, excel. But to the task at hand.
As Mr Sarwar points out, the petroleum development levy (PDL) has been replaced by the carbon tax. That is all. If this is indeed so and Mr Sarwar is an honourable man doing his master's bidding, it would then mean, as we are informed by the panel of economists assembled by his boss, that should the international price of oil to float between $60-65 (it already is there), the revenue from PDL next year would be barely Rs60 billion.
My class three arithmetic, and even worse, Islamabad arithmetic, would find it strange that the carbon tax, the celebrated replacement of the PDL, should result in more than doubling of revenues without an increase in price at the petrol pumps!
If we go by the great rejoinder, the price at the petrol pumps will have to be adjusted frequently, if not daily, throughout the year. One hears from a few strategically wired flies in Islamabad that at the moment the ministry of petroleum, the Federal Board of Revenue and the oil companies of Pakistan are at a complete loss on how in heaven's name are they going to implement this farce? After all we are not talking about 2-3 pumps all located near the finance ministry, are we?
One also hears that it is pointless to pillory Shaukat Tarin as I did – my apologies, Mr Tarin, because the poor fellow had little to do with the budget. He and the comely Ms Khar who can speak neither English nor Urdu were merely the presenters and the real author is Dr Hafiz Pasha (incidentally also the chairman of the panel of economists that I refer to above), who is too shy to stand up and take a well-deserved bow. If all of the above is a lie fabricated by yours truly, can the finance adviser guarantee that making the price of petroleum products so flexible will be a move that will be politically marketable? If you still don't agree, ask the petrol pump attendant you go to. He will be happy to explain the absurdity of this entire farce. And as the great Edward Said once said: 'Why doesn't anyone tell the truth anymore?'
As for inflation, the fruit cake from Shezan that I like has gone from Rs35 to Rs65 and I can swear that it has also shrunk – maybe it's a carbon cake. My last suggestion is to let Younis Khan prepare and present the budget. He can manage ten wayward players. He can also count up to 20. He should be able to manage this country's sinking finances. We can even have a tournament called F20.
Masood Hasan
Lahore
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The rejoinder by the ministry of finance (June 25) contains interesting pieces of information. If the government is really sincere about reducing our carbon footprint, the best solution would be to introduce mass transit systems running within and outside the major cities.
Sheheryar Ahmed
Islamabad
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ISSN 1563-9479 
