Monetary Policy Statement

17 Apr, 2012

Apropos BR editorial "MPS: little interest or enthusiasm", I agree with the earlier part of your editorial but you began to draw different conclusions after quoting Milton Friedman. There is a fundamental difference between a country in recession creating unemployment due to idle production capacity for lack of effective demand and a country faced with structural unemployment due to inadequate investment and limited production base reflecting low saving rate.
In the later case, money creation will lead to inflation and not job generation. Both Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes would be on the same page in the case of such economies. My fear is that the election year compulsions will take the budget further in a wrong direction and the economic team does not have the stature and the strength to restrain the stubborn political leaders from taking the wrong plunge. By the end of FY13 or early FY14, the country will be in a deep economic crisis whose ramifications will be much more serious and strong than in any period in the past checkered economic history of the country.
(The writer is former Governor STATE BANK OF PAKISTAN)

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