ARTICLE: As the old joke goes, sometimes you don't feel like taking a dip in the pool; sometimes you really want to write nothing.
And it is not because nothing is happening - in our beloved country not a single day goes by with nothing happening. I suppose the urge to write nothing has more to do with a writer's block, perhaps catalysed by a growing feeling that opinion making by and large, in a country overflowing with a "know it all" populace, is a futile exercise.
But be that as it may - deadlines are to be met, so here goes nothing!
On the bright side, during the last week the Government achieved the impossible by nudging (more perhaps shoving at gun point) the power producers into signing an MOU, which is intended to substantially reduce cost of power generation in the country in an attempt to take care of the circular debt. All criticism aside, Kudos!
Whilst the complete details of the understanding reached are as yet emerging, admittedly, there may well be repercussions of revising previously contracted obligations. But there was seemingly hardly any other option, other than saying no thank you to these ever increasing, arguably odious obligations - other than nationalization, of course. On the other hand, privatisation is probably off the table for some time now, so we better focus on strategies for SOEs going forward.
The ranting of free market supporters who are also diehard supporters of the Government is highly amusing, as they try to portray all this as within the tenants of capitalism and cringe while doing so. Poor chaps!
Not taking away anything from this effort, as I previously opined in the column on the power sector inquiry report, I for one am more interested in the steps taken to ensure that we don't find ourselves in a similar bind a few years down the road. Recall when these very agreements were signed, back in history, they were hailed as an achievement by the then Government, and nobody, not a single expert, dared call a spade a spade.
If we don't stop the leak, we will continue mopping the floor all our lives and still achieve nothing.
On the remittance side, the news this week was we had the best month ever - and to be honest, nobody knows why; if anybody does, they have as yet said absolutely nothing about it. Like it or not, we are by and large clueless as to why remittances go up or down. Most theories are sheer guess work. And to my mind there are no specific policies which encourage more remittances. It could be that the Pakistani Diaspora is encouraged by the developments in the country, and are remitting funds back home to invest in the housing schemes under the new policy. On the other hand, it could also be workers bringing home their savings after losing their jobs because of the global recession consequent to Corona.
If it is the former, let's open a bottle of honey and celebrate. If it is the latter, let us start worrying. If we don't know what the reason is at all, we better get our act together before we come to a point when we can do absolutely nothing.
You know, sometimes I wonder why Pakistan can't have a week when nothing happens!
The news that all the political stakeholders battling it out in Karachi had been made to come to an agreement for the betterment of the Crown Jewel of the economy was indeed a very big positive - the Chief Minister rejecting reports that such an agreement had been reached, punctured the balloon.
I am a Karachite by birth and lived there for almost two decades, so it pains me to see what the city has become every time I now visit Karachi - and politics is the singular cause, in my view. My opinion that democracy is a farcical illusion is strengthened when I see how voters in Karachi have fared after multiple elections: democracy is indeed taking its revenge, and one is really not sure what the Karachites did to democracy for it to get quite so upset.
From an economic perspective, it is very strange that all the time we were slaughtering the cash cow of the country everybody did nothing!
One sincerely prays and hopes that Karachi somehow achieves it former glory.
On the international front, things are getting dicey with our dearest and nearest friend. I am not an expert on foreign relations and neither do I follow global developments extremely diligently, but I am pretty sure that this kind of fall-out will not be good for the economy at the serious level. Beyond direct financial support at times, and deferred oil payments, a huge amount of worker's remittances are at risk. And, let's not forget, the country is a democratic Kingdom!
At the end of the day, I really enjoyed writing nothing.
(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: syed.bakhtiyarkazmi@gmail.com. The views expressed in this article are personal. The views are not necessarily those of the newspaper)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020