Economy crisis

This refers to the news report, ‘Pakistan out of economic crisis: IMF’ (Oct 25). Christine Lagarde, the IMF Managing Director, used a polite tone while discussing the country’s utter failure to control debt which has crossed 65 percent of the GDP – its interest being larger than the entire development budget. The MD further discussed unproductive government spending, non-investment in education and human resources, stating that one out of every 12 children in the world that do not attend school, live in Pakistan; poor export performance as compared to countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; adverse business environment; perceived corruption and bad governance.

The point is that the national economy is in serious crisis. The next two years will be more difficult owing to the continued fall in exports, rise in imports, huge trade gap, falling remittances, drop in FDI and maturing of loans.

Arif Majeed

Karachi