If the Panama leaks opened a can of worms for the Prime Minister and his three children the review of the ongoing and the proposed Annual Plan 2017-18 leak from the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms took away the 'thunder' of the Economic Survey 2016-17 used by our successive ministers of finance to sing their own praises.
The release of the Survey amidst much fanfare by none other than the Minister of Finance a day before the budget speech is baffling for three reasons: first, the data contained in the Survey is for nine months (July-March at best) with three months remaining for the end of the fiscal year thereby making most of the macroeconomic data provisional, necessitating later corrections.
Second, specific data notably that relating to trade and current account as well as credit procured by the government as well as the private sector is available for ten months on the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) website rendering the nine-month data projected in the Survey irrelevant and, in the event of a major shift from the trend of the past nine months, inaccurate and not appropriate for budget projections.
And finally, while the Survey data is viewed by our finance ministers, past as well as the incumbent, as a reflection of the performance of their policies yet it is precisely this element that is widely regarded as the reason for their inability to resist the temptation to 'manipulate' it to show a better performance than is in fact the case - a temptation that is relatively easy to cater to given that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) as well as the Economic Advisor's Wing that compiles and analyzes data for the Survey is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Finance.
What has been evident during the past four years with Ishaq Dar holding the portfolio of finance has been a steady rise in the erosion of the integrity of the data as well as those in positions of authority charged with the sacred responsibility of compiling and analyzing data given that: (i) repeated attempts by the Business Recorder to PBS officials to respond to queries relating to their statistics not 'rationalized' even with those released by affiliate departments of the Ministry of Finance as well as credible industry sources have failed; and (ii) the Economic Advisor's Wing during the Ishaq Dar led Finance Ministry has been increasingly engaged in drafting a defense of the economic policies rather than in providing guidance to the Finance Minister on formulating appropriate policies.
Thus any attempt to analyze the actual data and subsequent supporting analysis released by the Economic Survey 2015-16 may not serve any useful purpose for two reasons: those who know the subject challenge the data while the general public is unlikely to be convinced that it is better off than before just because the Finance Minister claims high growth rate, low inflation, contained budget deficit and low debt to GDP ratio as it bases its assessment not on raw data but on the purchasing power of each rupee earned ad the availability of infrastructure.
To highlight just a few areas of concern, one would have hoped that the Survey had mentioned the following: (i) an over valued rupee (the reason behind the steady decline in exports and rise in imports) though Dar's reaction to a question on this during the Survey launch would imply that anyone who dared mention this in the Survey may have feared being placed on administrative leave at best; (ii) the revision of data in surveys that challenges credibility for example errors and omissions accounted for a whopping negative 514 million dollars (July-April 2015-16) in summary of balance of payment in Economic Survey 2015-16 while the figure for July-March 2015-16 (just one month less) in Survey 2016-17 is negative 90 million dollars while the figure for the entire year 2015-16 is inexplicably (plus) 168 million dollars. The Survey gives the figure of negative 550 million dollars for 2016-17 - and based on past precedence this figure is likely to undergo some rather incredible changes; and (iii) the rise in current expenditure is only partly attributable to a rise in defense as maintained by Dar, which has been used as a justification for ever rising current expenditure, but increasingly payment of interest and principle as and when due on ever rising government borrowing - domestically and internationally including from commercial banks at high rates with low amortization period - accounts for the steady decline in our debt enhancing foreign exchange reserves.