It is heartening to note that some of the recent developments are indeed reassuring as they make us less worried about country’s economy, at least for now. One of these is of course country’s bonds that have soared to their highest level in at least 15 months.
The other positive development or ‘good news’ is about the inward FDI flows during July-October that have risen 7 percent to $525 million year-on-year.
Moreover, the current account deficit has declined sharply during July-October as compared to the same period of last fiscal year.
Having said that, I must say that it is increasingly clear that the country is not out of the woods yet as it is still in desperate financial straits.
It must be noted that the country’s bonds have rallied on hopes that more financial support is on the way after the caretaker setup’s finance team led by finance minister and a visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation reached staff level agreement on the first review under Standby Arrangement (SBA).
While the IMF has explained that the new SBA will support the Pakistani authorities’ immediate efforts to stabilize the economy against recent external shocks, it has underscored the need for policy implementation to overcome the country’s current challenges.
Yes, policy implementation in diverse areas of economy constitutes the key to overcoming the challenges besetting the country for quite some time. Let us admit that although the IMF is a lender, it has never dealt with Pakistan in any cruel manner, so to speak.
Unfortunately, however, our successive governments—civil and military alike-have done little or nothing towards achieving the goal of policy reform. In my view, policy reform or policy implementation is an overarching objective.
But the IMF must help Pakistan develop the required tools that can guide policy monitoring efforts throughout the policy reform process in an effective and transparent manner.
More importantly, a significant part of all policy implementation must be to prepare people better for many of those changes. An elected government enjoying people’s mandate will be better placed to successfully carry out this task.
Abu Adnan, Karachi
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023