‘Pakistan must take strong decisions for citizens’ welfare, economic turnaround’

Begging to differ with Aitzaz Ahsan on his poem Ryasat Hogi Maan Kay Jaisi, IBA associate professor Dr Huma Baqai said on Wednesday that state cannot be like mother but it must be responsible towards its people.

Speaking to a dialogue session, “Our vision of Pakistan: Impediments to development”, at Ziauddin University, she said: “When you lose economic sovereignty, you lose all sovereignties. It means your economy is on mortgage and unluckily we are at that stage, because our state is not ready to take any responsibility. State should be responsible, brave and strong. It should have the guts to take strong decisions for the people of Pakistan and for the betterment of our country.”

Baqai further remarked: “We have constructed a paradigm in which we cannot question the factions that have become powerful who knowingly or unknowingly inflict harm on us, often.”

She was of the view that criticism made institutions better though. The questioning culture had been systematically curbed and those who dared to question were labelled as traitors, she said, stressing that if the state wanted to put the house in order this must stop.

Baqai said untimely answers lead to obscurity like there has been on the Ojhri Camp disaster, the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report and the 1971 crisis.

“Because of this half truth and half lie thing, we have to distort our history after a period of time,” she commented. In a thinly veiled reference to the recent sacking of Atif Mian from the Economic Advisory Council due to pressure from extremist groups, she said, “It felt bad to see the change lacking the spine to make decisions.”

She asked the youth to work towards changing the system, saying that if they didn’t then they would bear the cost of the status quo which was global disgrace and a question mark on everyone’s identity. She said that the state should not seek soft solutions to problems and instead make better decisions, even if they were hard.

Noted economist Dr Kaiser Bengali said that unless the economic policies were reversed, the problems may not get resolved. He said the country suffered from the revenue-expenditure gap and, instead of balancing, the governments had been taking loans to fill it up. He said loans should be project-based; however, in Pakistan they were taken to finance services.

He said the country had more than $100 billion foreign debt and this occurred because of the dollar-rupee gap. In 1995 on every $100 there was a gap of Rs125 and, at present, we have imports of $23 billion and exports stand at around $60 billion.

Dr Kaiser Bengali said: “Our GST rate is seven per cent. It should be only five per cent. Our income deficit is 70 per cent higher than the services deficit. We need to reduce 20 per cent of military expenditure to stop the crisis in Pakistan. Extra ministries should be abolished.

“We have been cutting developmental expenditures, rather slashing the budget for non-developmental sectors.” The economist elaborated: “It’s like a factory owner, saving up for his lavish lifestyle, firing workers to overcome the losses, neglecting the fact that this scheme would eventually shut down the factory.” Bengali said that as compared to other South Asian countries, Pakistan was rich in resources and if put in the right direction it could eliminate hunger and poverty of its people within 10 to 15 years. He added that all they needed to do was to revisit economic policies, reduce defence expenditures and abolish some “unnecessary” ministries.

Talking about the country’s trade deficit, he said that the manufacturing industries were overburdened with taxes as compared to others because of which the products could not be made locally nor exported. He said furnace oil was one of the biggest imports and only with switching to coal, which was in abundance in Pakistan, a quarter billion dollars could be saved up for the national exchequer.

“This, however, seems not happening at all because the elite don’t want this to happen. They are like passengers on a flight, making their cabin stronger with nuts and bolts from the plane, not worrying that it puts all of them in danger too,” he commented.

“Any economy is required to maintain foreign exchange reserves equal to at least three months of imports, and if it goes below that, it means the economy is at crisis point and unfortunately Pakistan is very near to this danger.

“In last two years, we took a two billion dollars’ loan from China only to maintain our reserves. It shows in future it would be very difficult for us to get loans from the IMF. We would have to accept their hard economic and political conditions,” said the economist.

Dr Asim Hussain, chancellor of Ziauddin University, expressed his surprise at the annual imports of food items worth more than 10 billion dollars and the imports of cosmetics of over $2 billion. He wondered why the nation wasted such a huge amount on lavish living, increasing the debts through trade deficit every year.

He advised the people to take serious notice of the increasing foreign influence on the country and the nation as a whole. He expressed his concern over the national failure in changing the curricula of educational institutions in the last seven decades.

Earlier, Vice Chancellor Ziauddin University Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui welcomed all the panelists and appreciated the enormous number of young students for taking part in the program.

He advised the students to always keep in mind that “you all are the future of Pakistan. Always be ready to serve humanity, speak truthfully and practise your profession without prejudice for religion, nationality, race, political or social standing.”