EDITORIAL: The prime minister talks about promoting tourism a lot because, all things considered, it's about as good a way as any of bringing much needed foreign exchange into the country and retiring some of our nagging debt. Promoting industrialisation is important too given our circumstances because, just as he implied at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Sambrial-Kharian motorway the other day, it will increase production while tourism is doing its work and eventually ramp up exports and bring foreign exchange in a more reliable and desirable way.
The government is forced to think out of the box - a sad commentary on what tourism has been reduced to in this country - because the new fiscal year hasn't exactly started like it wanted. The current account is back in red, the August year-on-year trade deficit revelation was shocking (122 percent up), the fragility of the bond market has been exposed, and the currency is in free fall. That doesn't sound like the best way to go about impressing the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is exactly what it is going to have to do if it wants to keep its expansionary budget as well as the Extended Fund Facility (EFF).
But there's no way tourism can fill the dollar gap, as the PM called it, in the immediate term. The best that can, and should, be done right now is to erect the infrastructure that will give the sector the kind of facelift that will have a chance of attracting top dollar. That too has its limitations in the absence of attractions for western tourists like discos, night clubs, casinos, etc. The best we can hope for is building up local tourism and from on a limited scale from Islamic countries. Industrial sector uplift, too, is a medium- to long-term thing, so nothing is going to happen in a hurry. Plus the situation that has just erupted across the border in Afghanistan has made all sorts of foreigners, even investors who had stakes in our financial market from far away, beeline for the exit lounge.
A very important ingredient in this plan, therefore, will have to be restoring investor, and tourist, confidence. It doesn't help at all that there is a very hostile effort, led by our eastern neighbour to beat Pakistan to wherever it is going and poison the well before it gets there. The government ought to understand, then, that essential things like investment and tourism depend largely on sentiment, and there is nothing that spooks markets like uncertainty. That is why the PM has done the right thing by making his intentions crystal clear. Pakistan is naturally endowed in everything that makes for a thriving tourism sector. And we can easily meet, if not cross, a number of countries just like us whose tourism earnings run into many billions of dollars every year. All we need to do is pour enough money into this sector to make it shine and draw people from all over.
The trouble is that such things put a lot of pressure on the development budget. And already everybody has been told to freeze all sorts of unnecessary expenditure till further notice. Nothing describes the situation quite like that; needless to say. So the prime minister will just have to decide whether or not this is necessary enough to be spared the freeze. And in times like these, when nothing is more important than getting on the right side of the IMF and keeping the direction of the budget, whether or not to push tourism up the priority list is quite the Hobson's choice.
The PM has been talking about tourism long enough for this not to be one of those spur-of-the-moment things that all leaders are occasionally overcome by; some more often than others, regrettably. But since ours is such a cramped fiscal position that there are limitations to most ambitious ideas, the real measure of leadership now would be to find ways to innovate and deliver results despite them.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021