(February 22-2023)
Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Wednesday lauded the leadership of IMF that took note of the plight of Pakistan people and asked our government to tax rich and subsidize poor.
Pakistan will need another IMF programme after completion of the ongoing programme to survive giving the ability to the lender to impose conditions that will help the poor come out of the elite stranglehold, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that IMF continuously monitor the economic and financial policies of member countries and helps them design and implement sound policies and the disastrous impact of Pakistan’s policies is an open secret that should be fixed without delay.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that IMF typically forces member countries to boost revenues, manage public finances and monetary policy, regulate the financial system, and develop statistical systems but it should also consider providing some comfort to the masses.
He noted that a distinct politico-economic crisis has been brewing for almost decades in Pakistan and everyone in the country is worried about the impending collapse of the economy.
So far no political implosion or mass unrest has occurred in Pakistan but increasing economic and political instability has given birth to discussions of a worst-case Sri Lanka-style collapse in Pakistan, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that elite capture of the state and its machinery has resulted in sub-optimal policies for millions over decades but recent changes in the geopolitical system and growing inequality have made it difficult for policymakers to keep bribing the elite.
The business leader said that ventilator-style external support has so far prevented mass unrest on the scale of Colombo in Pakistan but this faux normality must not be taken for granted anymore.
Addressing elite capture remains the most difficult but most necessary issue to addressing the structural causes of further unrest for which the answer is to reform.
The foremost tool and target of elite domination are the state’s extractive systems, which have been configured by elites over decades and are crucial in shaping policy outputs, they can also exploit the state apparatus for extractive gain.
Pakistan’s power and governance mandate lie not with the people but with the elite collectively working to protect political power, which they then exercise for a mutually beneficial exchange and only IMF has the ability to break this nexus to provide relief to the masses.
