Before the key

ARTICLE: Our quest for the key to economic growth continues.

Albeit, this time around we need to be a lot more careful when choosing the path, because we neither have the resources now, nor have any time left to indulge in more flights of fancy.

Perhaps flight of fancy is a strong choice of words, even for sarcasm. Perhaps we never had a choice when we embraced the Washington Consensus; more likely than not, the neoliberal manifesto was thrust upon us by our creditors. After all, given a choice, why would we have liberalised trade when we very well knew that domestic manufacture could not compete with Multinational corporations? It would have been insane to allow free flow of capital when aware of dependency on imported oil for energy needs, and the need to import defence equipments. What benefit did we get from enforcing copyright and trademark? It could not have been rational thought which led to welcoming FDI at what it cost us; and who sells their profit making enterprises for piddly sums, and retains the loss making units, all in the name of reforms?!

It is my opinion, way back when the neoliberals suckered, or forced, us towards their agenda, if an accurate futuristic scenario analysis had been carried out, our chosen path may well have been different. Even today, one remains the lone voice against the neoliberal manifesto - it is actually remarkable how free market capitalism has been hammered into our opinion makers; for every economic crisis, their solution, repeated like a parrot, is open imports, get FDI, privatise, and reform.

What has changed, however, is that they are today on the wrong side of history!

For almost the last two decades, if not more, we did what they told us to do. We opened up our borders, for goods, currency, and aliens; we imposed copyright and trademarks, we privatized, we liberalised our markets, we liberalised finance, we abolished barriers for foreign firms to come into our territory - and we followed their reform agenda: structural reforms, policy reforms, judicial reforms, police reforms, reform reforms.

And after 20 years of all that, what do we have to show for it? Manufacturing is down to 12.48% of GDP, and an external debt of US$ 110 billion!

But we may have an even bigger problem with the neoliberals: their duplicity.

Free market capitalism is all about private firms maximising profits in their best interests, and this regard to their own self-interest should provide dinner for all of us - well, at least that is what Dear Father by and large said in his most famous quote.

Not wanting to sell, taking advantage of price differential because of whatever reasons, or benefitting from opportunity is strictly not criminal activity - it is only watching out for your own self-interest, more profits.

So why are the free market supporters, the noisy neoliberals, not coming out vehemently to support private power, the sugar barons, and the flour millers?

All they did was make profits! They, the neoliberals, should cheer their champions: the elite rentiers, the monopolists, the profiteers.

In the case of the power sectors, unless there was non-compliance with the agreements, all else is making profits! There may be a law now, but what stopped the mills from waiting to sell at a higher profit when the market was ripe for the taking?

Whilst I have a right to get angry and upset about herbs and medicines disappearing from the market as soon as they are identified as a potential remedy for Corona, and then being sold in the black market at horrendous prices - the free market supporters, on the other hand, should cheer these developments. Making money out of public miseries is what Big Pharma has been doing for ages in the name of free market capitalism.

As a passing comment, it is very curious that even the State, seemingly helpless against the black marketers, fails at ensuring provision of such herbs and medicines.

Finally, neoliberals cannot even hide behind the corruption argument; for them to be able to do that, there first needs to be proof that someone misused public power for private gains. What does this mean? Well, they will get it!

So, dear friends of the free market, openly come out and support the sugar, flour and power Tycoons, as well as those who are profiteering in the pandemic, and thereafter explain how we will industrialise and pay our external debt - and if you can't do either, hold your peace henceforth.

Apologies, dear readers, for perhaps digressing a bit from our quest for the key to economic growth - however, it was necessary to push neoliberal thought over the cliff.

Additionally, it is perhaps also necessary to demonstrate that more market and less government, the mantra of the neoliberals, does end up eroding the Rule of Law. The pursuit of profit is very different to the pursuit of happiness. And this kind of erosion encourages the wrong kind of more government, as was evident from the budget this year.

In Shaa Allah, we will pick up the thread from here next week - the idea was to answer the critics, before the Key.

(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are personal. The views are not necessarily those of the newspaper)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020