From A Ringside Seat: Prime Minister's claim nothing but obliviousness of the ground realities

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani's claim that the economy has stabilised during the last four years was nothing but his total obliviousness of the ground realities. His briefing to the Parliamentarians in the National Assembly on economy reminded me of an episode narrated by a friend of mine that how a student got written his thesis from someone else.
The thesis was approved and during viva (interview) when the examiner asked the student to explain meaning of a paragraph, the student spontaneous reaction was that he had asked him (the person who wrote thesis for him) not to use such a difficult language. Gilani read a written speech on the economy, obviously prepared by his economic team, painting a rosy picture, which was in stark contrast to the reality. At one point, he even mixed up the imports and exports when he vociferously stated that country exported 1.2 million tons urea.
The instance response of the media persons covering the economy in the press gallery was that the Prime Minister Gilani was not even familiar with the impacts of words spoken by him. The Prime Minister quoted stable exchange rate, growing exports, declining inflation, full releases of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), and robust growth in remittance as hallmark achievements of his government during the last four year.
Additionally, he expressed resolve to overcome circular debt in next few days, and boasted that for the first time share of provinces through the National Finance Commission (NFC) has been raised considerably. The government, according to the Prime Minister has also adopted austerity and sustained without any support of bilateral and multilateral in the current fiscal year but did not mention that it was only possible through massive borrowing from the schedule banks.
Gilani assured the parliamentarians that the revenue target of Rs 1,952 billion would be achieved and promised the nation that their future was in secure hands and they would soon be benefiting from the trickle down effects of the steps taken by his government during the last four years.
The poor economic performance of his government is evident from unsuccessful ending of International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme and refusal by the bilateral and multilateral to continue providing programme lending to the country. The government has been borrowing from the scheduled banks to meet the expenditure and consequently increasing the total public debt of the country. Gilani does not need enemies in the presence of such advisor who have been showing him rosy picture about the economy instead of telling him facts and real challenges with measures to fix the economy.
The fiscal deficit, analysts fear, would be around 8 percent of the GDP and foreign exchange reserves of the country decline below $10 billion in the current fiscal year, pushing the country back to 2008 situation. Pakistan is compelled by fast depleting foreign exchange reserves to take a bailout package from IMF to support the reserves, which too ended unsuccessfully because of failure by the government to meet the performance criteria of reducing fiscal deficit and subsidies elimination.
The economic managers have not been able to resolve the circular debt issue by reducing the line losses and theft in the and provision of subsidy to the power sector is consuming twice the amount of PSDP and performance of other State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) has worsen in the tenure of present government.
The economic managers have been providing them subsidies as life line instead of their restructuring. A lot of papers work and host of meetings of Cabinet Committee on Restructuring (CCOR) remained futile to reform the power sector and other entities and consequently every entity is looking for financial help from the Ministry of Finance to manage their routine affairs.
The Finance Ministry is meeting the financial requirements through sovereign guarantees from banks. The irony of the situation is that the Prime Minister wanted the media to give hope to the people but is unwilling to acknowledge failure of his government.
Someone needs to tell Gilani that the performance of his government would only give hope to the people and not media, so instead of requesting media it is his responsibility as chief executive of the country to be aware of masses (his constituency) problems and put in place the polices to resolve them, which would remain unlikely without honest and frank advice by the policy pundits.