While Pakistan had borrowed US$ 37.9 billion till June 2000 (during the first 52 years of its Independence), in between 2005-2015, the impoverished country contracted US$ 50 billion in foreign loans.

Addicted to heavy borrowing, state minions utilised some 60 per cent of the foreign loans obtained during the last 10 years for providing budgetary support or on maintaining the balance of payments. How disturbing? While majority of the citizens are still without clean drinking water, leave aside bread, clothing and shelter, people are justified in asking the rulers where the borrowed money has gone.

The country has reached a point where interest payments now consume around 44 per cent of its total tax revenues. In a report, a research group -- Research and Advocacy for the Advancement of Allied Reforms (Raftaar) -- has called public debt situation an "existential crisis" for the Pakistani state.

Even a cursory glance over the borrowings would show that in the last eight years, Pakistan’s public debt increased more than three times, from Rs6.3 trillion in 2008 to Rs19.914 trillion at the end of July 2015. One-third of this debt is foreign, which is about five times cheaper than domestic debt that accounts for the remaining two-third of the total debt. During the last two years alone, the government added Rs3.52 trillion to the domestic debt. The government’s strategy of borrowing massively from banks leaves very little for the private sector and it has thus failed to induce economic growth.

Last year, Pakistan paid Rs1.704 trillion to service its debts, and the figure is likely to further rise by the end of the current fiscal year.

While our present generation leaders lead a lavish lifestyle and their ever-increasing perks/privileges and foreign jaunts consume billions of tax-payers’ money, over 42 per cent of the country’s population is deprived of even basic facilities of life.

In total contrast to Pakistan where men in politics have become fabulously rich, while in power Uruguayan leader Jose Pepe Mujica’s entire wealth was nothing more than a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. About his wealth, Britain’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ (June 5, 2010) wrote: President Mujica "doesn’t have a bank account or other assets and doesn’t reside in presidential palace. He donates a major chunk of his monthly salary for charitable purposes. He has refused to move to the official presidential residence, opting to stay in the simple home his senator wife owns on the outskirts of the capital, Montevideo."

Nearer home, one of the former presidents of our neighbouring and brotherly country Iran, simple and austere Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is well-known for driving a 33-year old Peugeot 504 even after the dawn of the new millennium. During the later part of the first decade of this century, Ahmadinejad auctioned his car for $1 million with the intention of utilising the sale proceeds for building 60,000 homes for the disabled and needy women. Will our leaders and legislators follow suit?

For comparison’s sake, now let us have a look at the legacy of Pakistan’s founding father and the first head of state, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Before the start of a cabinet meeting when the ADC enquired from the Governor General (GG) if they were serving tea or coffee in the meeting. The Quaid-e-Azam replied sternly: "Whichever of the ministers wish to have tea or coffee should drink it before leaving his home or when he returns home. The nation’s money is for the nation and not for the ministers!" As long as Quaid-e-Azam was the head of the nation, nothing except water was ever served in the cabinet meetings.

Once, some items amounting to Rs38.50 were purchased for Governor General’s House. The Quaid asked for the bill. A few items were purchased on Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s request. The Quaid gave instructions that the amount be deducted from her account. A couple of items were for Governor General’s personal use. The Quaid advised that the amount be deducted from his personal account.

This was Pakistan of 66 years ago when Jinnah was head of the state. Till 1970, simple living and working with a sense of commitment had been the norm of leaders. When Ch. Muhammad Ali was prime minister, his wife used to cook food herself. The number of domestic employees available to his present-day counterpart is over 200.

President Ayub Khan felt quite comfortable travelling by PIA’s commercial flights. Now, there are over a dozen planes for the exclusive use of the president, prime minister, governors and chief ministers, who enjoy rides in these aircrafts without any distinction of official or private use.

Till 1960s, there was a strict control on the food/snacks served in the President’s or Prime Minister’s House. General Ayub Khan’s son, Gohar Ayub, writes in his autobiography that he had invariably to pay the bill for the food or snacks that were served to them whenever he and his family visited the Presidency to meet their parents.

However, since 1965, the country’s expenditure invariably exceeded its revenue income. If one tries to find out the reasons for increase in the expenditure, one would come to the conclusion that the establishment’s craze for perks/privileges and a life of luxury at the state expense, coupled with continued imports of fancy products and ever-rising corruption, are prime reasons for the ever-widening gap between the revenues and the expenditure, leaving little for development.

At a time when the country’s economy is in tatters, it is the dire need of the hour to bridge the revenue gap by bringing the ‘exemptions-enjoying’ commercial enterprises to the tax net, practicing austerity, curtailing non-development expenditure and privatising haemorrhage-stricken public sector enterprises that continue to bleed the exchequer.

It is not the job of the government to manage business or run commercial enterprises. Experience tells that even the most efficient and profitable ventures under the government control soon turn into sick, inefficient and loss-making enterprises. Perhaps, such a pathetic state of public sector enterprises across the globe prompted Milton Friedman to say: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand."

Milton Friedman’s observation perfectly fits Pakistan, where the government is in every sector and as a direct market participant/competitor it is obstructing the private sector’s entry into the market place and thus arresting growth of both revenues and the economy. According to the findings of the Pakistan’s Planning Commission (PC), the footprint of the government has been estimated to be as large as over 50 per cent of the national income, making it very difficult for the private sector to expand.

Poor governance and dysfunctional markets figure high among the most important reasons why growth in Pakistan could not achieve a sustained acceleration, admitted Pakistan’s Planning Commission in a book entitled "Pakistan: Framework for Economic Growth" published by it in May 2011.

With no reasonable fiscal space in sight, the earlier the government entrusts the management of public sector enterprises to the private sector the better it would be for the national economy. Remember, in the past, the government used to pump money into taken-over banks every year, but after privatisation, the banks have become robust dividend-paying entities that also contribute billions of rupees in taxes to the national exchequer. Likewise, after privatisation the public sector enterprises may start yielding profit and paying handsome amounts in taxes to the government, which would not only rid the nation of the menace of subsidies but would also bolster its revenues in the shape of taxes and duties.

But, in the past, greed and lust for quick money pushed some individuals to privatise the state enterprises in a non-transparent manner. Consequently, majority of the individuals or groups that bought those units avoided to make fresh investment in those ventures and, with the connivance of some state minions, they simply opted to sell the infrastructure, in particular the precious lands attached to those units, to make quick gains overnight.

This was done in violation of the basic objectives of the privatisation policy, which was to use 90 per cent of the proceeds to retire debts and spend the rest on poverty alleviation. However, instead bulk of the privatisation proceeds were utilised to funding the annual budgets or lowering the fiscal debts.

Corrupt elements had reportedly made 30 trillion rupees and rendered 700,000 workers jobless in the past privatisation deals, says Jamaat-i-Islami chief Siraj-ul-Haq. In view of this, some circles in the country, including leaders of Jamaat-i-Islami, vow to resist the plans to privatise Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan State Oil and other important public sector enterprises.

Therefore, if the government really wants to privatise loss-making but strategically important units, it will have to take the stakeholders on board, get solid guarantees from the buyers that they shall invest more money to modernise those ventures and keep them running, retain majority of the employees and retire only redundant or unfit workers, giving them full retirement benefits.