Promises Exports al Deficit Overview
One year of PTI Government
Economy
Sta
A Business Recorder Perspective
Ali Khizar One year is gone. There is not much to take home about the PTI economic team’s performance. The team came totally unprepared, and on job training wasted some time, and additional cost incurred to an economy which was in an urgent need of stabilization measures. There is no doubt that the mess they inherited was big, but yet, the timely resolve was missing. There were more talks and less substance. The team lacked professionalism, and adhocism is one word to best describe earlier decision making. There were too many management changes. There was no clear direction from the start. A few policies were contradicting, as the demand slowdown, revival of manufacturing sector, restoring domestic investors confidence and accountability efforts all were attempted to be implemented simultaneously. The focus on any one agenda was missing, and in the process, economic management lost credibility and domestic investor confidence came to a new low.
Too many committees, advisory councils and task forces are there where services of experts are provided voluntarily. The volunteers either lack incentive and authority to bring any change or they have vested interests. The task forces are fatigued. Housing was on the top agenda of the government, but the task force has yet to come to with concrete plan to crack housing financing and low commercial viability puzzle. The agenda of civil service reforms and fiscal austerity is not even now talked about. Energy task force could not present a viable plan to reduce circular debt or to solve the riddle of growing capacity payment. The economic advisory was formed and all it discussed –IMF or no IMF; but no alternate plan was presented. Now it’s nowhere in sight. Later another business advisory council was formed, but was short-lived. Now the IMF is at the helm. The existing team has nothing much to do with the core of PTI and its ideology. The
technocrats are running the show, and the focus is to bring macroeconomic stability- by having undervalued currency and high interest rates to curb demand and attract non-banking government financing. The economic demand is curbed, and fiscal debt servicing is growing – side effects of stabilization. Fiscal performance in the first year was poor. Two mini
spending – that further hampered growth. Only talks were on reducing PSE losses – privatization was not the agenda, and by the time Sarmaya board was formed, team was changed. Back to square one, as current finance advisor is pro-privatization. Government does not have money and the concept proposed by PTI is of public
budgets were presented, but nothing substantial was done to jack up FBR revenues or to cut down administrative expense. The only cut was in development
private partnership. But there is no capacity in ministry of finance to make and implement PPP models. Even, if someone has an idea, he or she would not
implement due to accountability fear of NAB. The decision making is at standstill. The FBR performance was below average in the first year. Despite presenting two mini budgets, revenues fell short from the previous year. The chairman was sacked and now a doer from the private sector is in charge. This year target is impossible, but a decent growth in FBR revenues is likely. FATF compliance and documentation are not mutually exclusive. The money laundering and terrorism financing cannot be traced without documenting the whole economy. The government has a clear direction on documenting the economy and to expand the tax base. FBR collection to improve in the process. Traders, retailers and other services groups will resist change. There will be strikes and shortages. The investor confidence will likely erode further before improving. The other problem is that NAB is not in control, and its investigating a
few big business groups as well. None of the big business is fully clean in Pakistan, the business accountability is not helping restore confidence. Anyhow, any shift in economic direction will restore the investors’ confidence. The immediate problem is balance of payment – foreign obligations financing. The SBP is eyeing on attracting foreign portfolio investment, and other form of foreign flows – be it by exports, tourism or FDI. The relationship with the US is of utmost importance as CPEC is on the back burner. The PTI has secured a good grade in foreign policy. Celebrity status of PM Khan amidst civil-military leadership on the same page are improving Pakistan image internationally. The dividends from it may start coming in 6-24 months and that may jumpstart the economy. But the core of the fiscal problem is related to energy, and that requires serious reforms; otherwise the efforts will be of little use.
Adil Mansoor What should an ideal farm policy consist of? According to OECD’s ‘Policy monitoring and evaluation’ for 2019, efficient policies “clearly separate targeted measures that provide income support to farm households in need, from measures that support increased farm productivity, sustainability, resilience, and overall profitability”. Surely not a herculean challenge if goals of policy design are clear from the onset. It may be unfair to measure ruling party’s maiden year agri-goals against above definition, since it had failed to draw this distinction in its manifesto either. In a single breath, the manifesto spoke of “gross neglect of small farmers, need to make inputs cheaper to make farming more profitable, while retaining control on commodity prices to fight inflation”. The document was a partial disappointment as it lacked any path-breaking proposals, despite bragging to have been prepared by country’s top progressive-farming brains. But given its agri-czar’s pre-election dual role as kingmaker, the manifesto may be forgiven for lack of detail. Nevertheless, if there is any deadly sin that PTI’s agro-reform agenda may yet be held accountable for, its sloth. Not only did the manifesto mention need to impose an ‘agriculture emergency’, the term began to make rounds as early as last August as soon as it took
power. Yet, it took another 11 months before the plan could be finalized and taken to the PC-1 drawing board for feasibility approval. The argument that interventions under ‘agriculture emergency’ had to be clubbed with annual budget does not hold because the scope of the program is not limited to a single fiscal period anyway. The Rs309 billion outlays are planned over four years and hinge upon federal and provincial governments splitting the bill equally. Much has already been written about the weaknesses in the agriemergency program; but from a representative democracy lens, party’s real test is whether the plan measures up against its electoral promises, even if belatedly. In line with party’s commitment to “drastically cut water losses in agriculture”, the largest outlay is for water resources – a total of Rs220 billion. Over 80 percent of this has been earmarked for conserving water
through lining half of country’s total watercourses length, along with installation of fourteen thousand water storage tanks. Water conservation? Check. It is no surprise that the incumbents have failed to earmark funding for Diamer-Bhasha, despite tall promises. While it may be convenient to blame it on IMF-imposed austerity on development budget, given the dam’s $14bililion cost it was never going to see light of the day – whether under PTI, PML-N or even military rule. If there is one sub-sector within agriculture that fails to act like a lobby, its livestock - despite over fifty percent contribution to sectoral GDP. Just Rs5.3billion have been set aside over four years (remember, 50-50 cost-sharing!) for increasing livestock productivity through “save and fattening of calf” program. This is against Rs14billion for fishery alone – commendable in its own right – but that goes on to highlight the indifference to livestock, its high fragmentation and lack of organization keeping it from fighting for itself. The agenda is lacking in scale and scope despite manifesto promises of sustained interventions in feed quality, vaccination, genetic improvement, and enforcement of standards in dairy and meat industries. The country is on the verge of facing a creeping livestock crisis, and like
many others before it may only become primetime fodder once its too late. Any comment on cropping sector depends on readers’ expectations of PTI. No reference is made to any minor high-value low-delta crops such as fruits, vegetables, pulses and legumes, indicating that when it comes to farming, fixation with major crops is a hard-drug addiction to give up, even for party of ‘change’.
But even within major crops, the policy has pulled off a sleight of hand; while Rs19billion is set aside for increasing wheat productivity, cotton has been ignored wholescale. Instead, Rs15billion shall be spent on sugarcane and rice, crops already doing nominally well. So far, the “Agriculture Emergency” program remains the only salient program to measure party’s performance against in a sector that contributes up to 60 percent directly and indirectly to total
GDP according to Hafiz Pasha, and more than three-fourths of exports. With close Rs80billion set to be spent in first year, the proof of the pudding will lie in the eating. Given agriculture is a provincial subject, it remains to be seen whether project’s execution will witness major teething issues. It helps that Punjab’s provincial government is not seen to be too independent of the bosses in Islamabad, given the province is responsible for more than two-thirds of agri output. However, Sindh’s lack of participation in the design and subsequent approval of national agri-plan was highlighted even in the media talk by Minister of MNFS&R. It remains to be seen whether the funds for projects earmarked for the province shall be allocated elsewhere or will simply dry out. Though, as an unintended consequence, Sindh’s performance in agriculture over the next four years, financed by its own budget, can prove to be a good litmus test whether agriculture and irrigation can do well as provincial subjects, with little intervention from federation. Despite being out of power at national level for over six years, it is ironic that the burden to prove ‘devolution project’ a success may once again fall to PPP.
