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Archive for category Asif Zardari Crook Par Excellance

THUG LIFE IN THE IDIOTS REPUBLIC AN EYE OPENER By Simon Templar

 

 

THUG LIFE IN THE IDIOTS REPUBLIC AN EYE OPENER

By Simon Templar

 
The level of public debate is so ill informed in this self-styled fortress of Islam, that if it were not so painful to the educated eye, it would be hilarious.
Illiteracy has been chosen as the best opiate to keep the masses ignorant and at bay by the cunning who are the gleeful beneficiaries of Pakistan kleptocratic so called system.
An exaggerated focus on the lofty, historic principles of a great religion is the other great diversion to keep the masses occupied as the ruler’s loot and plunder.
In a country where every steel mill owner drives sports cars and expensive SUVs, the Pakistan Steel Mills remain shut, bleeding billions of rupees a year.
Does anyone even remember how on the momentous return to full democracy, Asif Zardari plundered $350 million in cash from the PAK Steel Mills using front man Riaz Lalji?
This is what crippled the industrial giant within six months of Zardaris being elected.
Democracy was indeed the best revenge!
A money launderer and Tax Evader as Finance Minister will only appoint similar smaller thugs and facilitators to be the head of Federal Tax Service, The National Bank and the Securities Commission.
The national Airline is being purposefully bled, mal-administered and run into the ground to promote Air Blue owned by Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
A relative bodybuilders son is leading the export charge, resulting in declining exports year on year for the last three years
Another relative]s son is in charge of the power ministry, he has given the gift of 12-hour power cuts in rural areas.
Zardari’s Power Base Sind Provincial Assembly has passed a law against anti corruption efforts, he wishes for his loot and plunders to go on unimpeded.

So happy, nay gleeful is this corrupt  lot that they are all joyfully marrying the first loose, ambitious woman that they can lay hands on, Power Minister Khwaja Asif has married Kashmala Tariq, Zardari – Ayan Ali and Ishaq Dar- Marvi Memon

The PML-N lot seem to have a thing for Musharraf’s erstwhile cheerleaders!
Ancient heritage sites are being destroyed to build expensive bus & train tracks giving tremendous kickbacks
Nothing has been done to moderate or regulate the proliferation or activities of religious  Madrassahs across the country
Journalists are openly on the take, peddling blatant falsehoods on TV and in print for a fist full of dollars.
Lie loud, hard and repeatedly and the buffoons will believe you!
There is no mention of population control and the government cannot even carry out a census conclusively
Polio, eradicated around the globe, still rears it’s ugly head in the land of the pure, with medical teams and nurses attempting to administer drops regularly shot at and killed.
While still struggling to produce enough electricity despite all claims, the looming water crisis is not even mentioned by anyone!
The elected wizards making lofty claims have not been able to build a single major dam in the last four decades.
Courts cases drag on for years and decades, but no one thinks of having more judges and an improved legal system to provide effective, transparent and speedy justice
Production of poultry, eggs, sugar, cement, banking, telecom, cars, milk, meat, oil and steel is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few hundred families, all connected to politics, all growing fabulously rich.
The poor turn to prostituting their daughters, selling their sons and killing themselves such is their misery in this cruel callous system
The government is inefficient to the point of being useless and dispensable.
Even the simple task of garbage collection in this country of 200 million illiterate souls is being done by Turkish companies connected to the ruling family. Payments and kickbacks both being made in dollars abroad!

Every single state enterprise being run by this country’s immoral, shameless ,  corrupt, complicit bureaucrats are inefficient and loss making to the point of being redundant.

 
Civil servants are little more than servile, slimy facilitators, bowing and scraping as they obsequiously pleasing their political masters while feeding off the few grubby crumbs thrown their way.
Yet this blighted lot, the masses want democracy!
 
Dear sirs, who will explain to these morons, that this is NOT a democracy, it is elected KLEPTOCRACY.
Democracy means transparency, efficiency, accountability, service delivery, social development and nation building
If this creaky structure is to carry on, if this geographic entity is to survive with its current borders, it needs a strong man at the top with a few determined good men to sort it out.
Ban and banish anyone who has ever held elected political office over the last 50 years, bring back looted money, empower the civil servants, and clean the mess up.
This is the last chance,  the final hope before this leaky ship goes under, either do it now or rename this blighted land:
“The Idiots Republic of Al-Bakistan”
The writer is a Geostrategic analyst based in Brussels

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Scam Worth Billions Revealed in Sale of Bank of Punjab

Bank of Punjab fraud case: Supreme Court summons former board directors

 

Scam Worth Billions Revealed in Sale of Bank of Punjab

 

A big scandal has surfaced in the Bank of Punjab – where the share price of the bank was manipulated in order to offload shares and take control of the bank due to the 70% Rights issue.

The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue took the notice of this scandal recently. Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue has said in a press conference that “a day light robbery has been unearthed in the sale of Bank of Punjab where the share price was brought down to gain benefits of billions”.

Pakistan People’s Party Senator Saleem Mandviwalla said that “Bank of Punjab’s share price has fallen significantly since the announcement of the Board meeting for rights issuance”.

 

During the period i.e. post rights announcement (from March 29th till April 14), the market fell by 2% whereas BOP’s share price plunged by 17%, he added.

Senator Saleem Mandviwalla said that “Market players especially those who may have inside information about the right issue would have short sold the stock to make a quick gain”.

He also said that “the announcement of 70% rights issue at a price of only Rs 12.00/= does not seem to be justified; while the stock had recently seen a high of Rs 20.37 on 9th Nov 2016” (i.e. the share price is down 35% from its recent high).

The Board of Directors should have ideally dealt with the rights issuance when market conditions were conductive (during in 2016) and thus by delaying it; they have acted against the interest of minority shareholders, Senator Saleem Mandviwalla added.

He said that the right shares @ Rs 12.00 seem all set to be sold at a throwaway price to benefit the Government of Punjab who’s looking for increasing its shareholding at the expense of minority shareholders”

Share price seems to be deliberately brought down to force people to panic and sell their shares.

Senator Saleem Mandviwalla said that the management of the bank failed to recover the looted money from defaulters of the bank and instead it resorted to increase the capital and that too at a deep discount instead. Senator Saleem Mandviwalla demanded that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) should take immediate notice of this scandal and investigate it thoroughly.

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The confessions of St Isaac aka Ishaq Dar By Ayaz Amir in The News International

The confessions of St Isaac

By Ayaz Amir

Islamabad diary

 

 

 

 

 

 

He has remitted around Rs20m to the country and his other assets and cash are worth Rs45m. Ishaq Dar, the Leader of Opposition in the Senate, has 15,779 dirhams in banks, owns a house worth Rs45m in Gulberg, Lahore, and six acres of land valued at Rs14.5m in Punjab.Mar 29, 2013

 

Oh, that moment of weakness if only it could be forgotten when Isaac called for pen and paper and in his own hand and at considerable length penned down the saga of money-laundering allegedly associated with the house whose top accountant he had been for so many years.

The tell-all tale was spread over 43 pages, no detail spared, everything about how fake bank accounts in international banks were opened in the names of the Qazi family, long known to Dar. Money from mysterious sources then came into these accounts before being transferred to the Hudaybia Paper Mills.          

The Sharifs are a religious family and the choice of this name testifies to their religious zeal. That this did not prevent the things being done under the rubric of this near-sacred name is, of course, a different matter.

We are more secular than we care to acknowledge, rendering unto Caesar and Mammon what is theirs, and to Allah what is His. Prayers, fasting and other religious obligations we keep for the uses of the Hereafter. For the here and now we tend to be more pragmatic.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But returning to the confessions, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had to extract no forced signatures from Isaac’s hands. He wrote the entire account himself and put his signature to it. And also, again in his own hand, he asked for leniency. Since he had out-performed any canary in singing, his name was removed from the list of the accused and he was made an approver…in other words, the prime witness for the prosecution.   

The money-laundering charge was but one case against the Sharifs. There were several others. But all of them were put on hold when through the intercession of their Saudi benefactors the Sharifs were taken from their prison cells and flown to the Holy Land. When in the twilight of the Musharraf era the so-called National Reconciliation Order was promulgated and Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, followed by Nawaz Sharif’s own return – this too being the result of Saudi pressure – the national landscape changed.

Bhutto’s assassination rocked the Musharraf regime and in the elections which followed his King’s Party, the Q – League fared poorly. The PPP took power at the centre and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, with no small help from Asif Ali Zardari, formed the government in Punjab, the nerve-centre of Pakistani politics. The PPP and the PML-N having come close to each other, no one was interested in pursuing the old cases, including the Hudaybia case based on Ishaq Dar’s confession.

Both the Sharifs and Asif Ali Zardari were quick to approach the courts to quash these cases. Dar did the same and his confession was quashed, it being declared as of no ‘evidentiary value’. Because all of this was being played on a friendly wicket, NAB did not go into appeal against this friendly decision.

We can imagine Isaac’s sense of relief. Incarceration under the Musharraf regime was not so much a nightmare as the statement he had given. Now seemingly the nightmare was over, the albatross around the neck of the former approver finally cut loose.

Remember also that Musharraf being a coup-making general, the charges brought by his regime against the Sharifs – quite apart from whether they were true or false – never elicited any great moral outrage on the part of the intelligentsia, the political class or so-called civil society, all of whom were more obsessed with denouncing dictatorship and celebrating the restoration of democracy, these being the flavours of that time. Corruption and accountability constituted a forgotten agenda.    

Zardari was clever but the Sharifs outplayed him, successfully pulling a veil of obfuscation over their own financial exploits and keeping the spotlight on the PPP, an endeavour in which they received powerful assistance from the restored chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who could only see the mote in the PPP’s eyes, never the glint in the eyes of the PML-N.

Small wonder, the PPP was branded as an irredeemably corrupt enterprise while the Sharifs were seen as exemplars of good governance and champions of development, a perception paying them handsome dividends in the 2013 elections.

True, Gen Raheel Sharif’s ascendancy became a problem for them because no one likes to walk in someone else’s shadow; and the 2014 dharnas came near to toppling their government. But the general in his winter no longer the commanding figure he was and the dharnas a receding memory, this was a time to savor their triumphs and think calmly about the future.

But everything has been upended by that bolt from the blue, the Panama papers and the hearings in the Supreme Court triggered by them. Uncomfortable questions are being asked for which there are no ready answers and demons long thought to have been laid to rest, like the confessions of St Isaac, are once again on the march, leading to fresh nightmares. When Dar’s lawyer said before the Supreme Court that Dar’s statement could not be used against him, it was suggested to him that could it not be used against the prime minister?      

We don’t know what becomes of it or what value is put on it. But the Sharifs have reason to be worried because the money trail leading to their offshore accounts and rich London properties is right there in this statement, backed by evidence in black-and-white: dates, bank accounts, deposits, and transfers, etc.       

The defence the PML-N is mounting rests on one word, duress – the contention that Isaac’s confessions were extracted through coercion, the word gunpoint also being used. Significantly, however, no one is saying that what is in the confessional statement, the details of money-laundering, are false. Shouldn’t that be the real burden of the PML-N’s argument?

It should really be a simple matter. The accounts opened in the names of the Qazi family may be fraudulent but the Qazis are real, living people. Why don’t they come up and say that what is being said about them is baseless, with no truth to these charges?

Why go on about duress when what Dar and his defenders should be saying is that the contents of the confessional statement are false – that there never were any Qazi accounts and so the question of mysterious funds being deposited in them simply does not arise?     

If they were to do this nothing would be left in the Panama case except sound and fury. And Dar’s nightmare would be finally over. But saying not a word about content they are giving the entire nation a sob story of extraction under pressure. If they debunk the contents of the confession the duress charge is automatically proved. But if they go on about duress while not touching the substance of the story who is to believe Isaac’s protestations?         

People retract confessions all the time, not only claiming coercion but roundly denying what they are accused of. Here the funny thing is that in a case which could well have a bearing on the country’s future a person indirectly involved is beating about the bush while saying nothing of the charge against him…and by extension, of the damning charge against the Sharifs.

 

Email: [email protected]

 

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Dr Ashfaque, Dr Pasha, Dr Salman write open letter to IMF “Wrong sides of the Picture”

Dr. Ashfaque H. Khan, Dr. Hafiz A. Pasha and Dr. Salman Shah, who have served on key posts in Finance Ministry and Planning Division have written an open letter to the IMF, exposing wrong picture presented by the Dar-led economic team about Pakistan’s economy. Dr Khan send this article to the Editor of Corporate Ambassador, Javed Mahmood today.

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The three year program under the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF), has now come to an end. Pakistan has received $6.1 billion loan from the IMF under this program. During the tenure of the program, Pakistan was required to undertake wide – ranging structural reforms and implement the type of macroeconomic policy that would restore macroeconomic stability, gradually promote economic growth and build foreign exchange reserves to bolster external buffers.

After the completion of the twelfth and the final Review, the IMF Staff Mission Report has declared ‘victory’ and stated that “the Fund Supported Program has helped the country restore macroeconomic stability, reduce vulnerabilities and make progress in tackling key structural challenges. Economic growth has gradually increased and inflation has declined. External buffers have been bolstered, financial sector resilience has been reinforced, and the fiscal deficit has been reduced while social safety nets have been strengthened”.

On the reform side, the Report stated that “tax policy and administration reforms allowed for further revenue mobilization.Steps have been taken to strengthen the State Bank of Pakistan’s autonomy. Energy sector reform allowed a reduction of power outages, energy subsidies, and accumulation of power sector arrears. A country – wide strategy to improve the business climate was adopted”.

The Staff Report contains the views of the IMF on the “success” of the program. We, the three independent economists, through this open letter would like to present the other side of the picture. In particular, we identify the extent of the success, how these “successes” have been achieved and express our disappointment with the failure to implement reforms that are critical for achieving higher economic growth. Needless to mention, the three authors of this open letter have all dealt in the past with the IMF in senior management capacity at the ministry of finance, either as Federal Ministers or Advisor.

Firstly, building foreign exchange reserves to bolster the external buffer was the main pillar of the hurriedly put together IMF Program. The idea was to build reserves and repay the then IMF loan on time. That is why many independent economists including the ones who remained associated with the IMF for a long time termed the program as ‘Self-Serving Program’.

Such an objective of the program forced the government to borrow extensively to build foreign exchange reserves and in the process accumulate net external debt of over $12 billion during the program period. Incidentally, Pakistan added exactly the same amount to its foreign exchange reserves, that is, from $6 billion in end-June 2013 to $18.0 billion in end-June 2016. The above facts clearly suggest that we improved the external buffer entirely through adding external debt. Isn’t it simply postponing the current problem of insolvency to a future date?

Secondly, in a three year program, the IMF has extended sixteen waivers. Perhaps never in the history of the IMF did Pakistan receive such a large number of waivers. This diluted the purpose of the program and also reflected on the lack of emphasis towards implementing and achieving the stated goals of the program.

Sadly, the IMF Staff Mission has selectively highlighted the improvement in some economic indicators from 2012-13 to 2015-16. This includes rising economic growth, falling rate of inflation, rising tax-to-GDP ratio,  higher spending under BISP and private sector credit and falling subsidies as percentage of GDP.

The rate of economic growth achieved in the last three years remains contentious. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has estimated the GDP growth rate as 4 percent or above each year, reaching 4.7 percent in 2015-16. The authors have presented contrary evidence that the growth rate has been exaggerated each year, and it has ranged between 3.1 to 3.7 percent during the program periods. The Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF) of the IMF should have been used to check the reliability of the national income estimates.

We would like to quote the recent statement of the Managing Director of the IMF as posted on September 1, 2016 by iMF direct. In her words “The longer demand weakness lasts, the more it threatens to harm long-term growth as firms reduce production capacity and unemployed workers are leaving the labor force and critical skills are eroding. Weak demand also depresses trade, which adds to disappointing productivity growth”.

This statement clearly depicts the current state of economic growth and unemployment in Pakistan in terms of the social costs of the excessive focus on stabilization policy. The persistence of lower economic growth has failed to create enough jobs. People in general and youth in particular, are finding difficulties to get jobs. People remaining unemployed for a longer duration are becoming unemployable, with all its social and economic consequences. Not only that the unemployment rate has surged to a 13 years high at over 8.0 percent (including the ‘discouraged worker’ effect), youth unemployment rate has also increased to over 11 percent in 2014-15. Furthermore, between 2012-13 and 2014-15, the annual number of entrants into the labour force has been approximately 650,000 as against 1.3 million during 2008-13.

A particularly worrying feature of the current employment situation is the extremely high unemployment rate of 20 percent of workers with either graduate or post graduate degrees. There are 2.4 million educated workers with bad employment prospects. This is the unfortunate outcomeof the IMF Program

On the size of the fiscal deficit, the IMF Report claims that this has been reduced from 8.5 percent to 4.6 percent of the GDP. A number of steps have been taken to report smaller deficits. For example, holding back refunds and forcing  commercial entities to pay taxes in advance to jack up revenue, privatization proceeds and foreign grants treated as non-tax revenue to inflate overall revenue rather than treating them as financing items, engaging in quasi-fiscal operations outside the budget, allowing for large statistical discrepancy each year (cumulatively Rs. 600 billion in three years) to show lower expenditures, exaggerating the size of the Provincial cash surplus, retaining earmarked revenues in the Federal consolidated Fund and building up large contingent liabilities (over Rs. 1400 billion of power sector circular debt, accumulation of debt in commodity financing and pending tax refunds). The IMF staff has either been blissfully unaware of or has condoned this creative accounting. Adjusting for these practices implies a fiscal deficit each year in the range of 7.0 to 8.0 percent of the GDP.

Other areas, where serious distortions exist, are: the estimates of the GDP deflator; investment and saving rates and rate of inflation, especially for poor households. A case ought to have been made for complete operational autonomy of the PBS.

Yet another “success” of the program as stated by the IMF Staff Mission is the sharp reduction in inflation rate. It has declined from 7.4 percent in 2012-13 to 2.9 percent in 2015-16. Does this decline owe to the ‘prudent’ fiscal and monetary policy pursued during the program period? The answer appears to be in the negative. The international oil and commodity prices started collapsing since June 2014. Such a collapse in the oil and commodities prices led to a worldwide decline in inflation, including in Pakistan. Furthermore, as stated above, the pursuance of stabilization policy for a prolonged period weakened the domestic demand, resulting into deceleration of prices. Thus, the sharp decline in inflation during the program period owes to the weakening of domestic demand, as well as a collapse in the international prices of oil and commodities and not to the prudent use of monetary and fiscal policy. In fact, when inflation rate was rapidly on the decline, the SBP was pursing an easy monetary policy.

The quarterly reviews have ignored the deterioration in key economic indicators. They failed to discuss big decline in exports – to – GDP ratio, stagnation in the overall and private investment – to – GDP ratio, fall in FDI, rise in external debt and public debt – to – GDP ratios, fall in total PRSP pro-poor expenditure to GDP and very importantly, a rise in the rate of unemployment especially among young, educated, and female workforce. Only 750,000 jobs were created annually in 2013-14 and 2014-15 as against 1.1 million jobs annually earlier.

As stated above, Pakistan was asked to implement a wide-ranging reforms under the IMF Program. What has been the performance on the reform side?

Power Sector Reforms

The glaring failure of the Fund program is in the implementation of power sector reforms. The 12thReview Report declares victory primarily by demonstrating that the subsidy to the sector has fallen massively from 2percent of the GDP in 2012-13 to only 0.6percent of the GDP in 2015-16.

How has this been achieved? The answer is not by any major improvements in efficiency through big reduction in losses. Instead, the policy has been to raise the power tariffs to generate more revenues and thereby reduce the need for subsidies. From 2012-13 to 2015-16, the average electricity tariff (including surcharges) has been enhanced by 40percent, leading to extra revenues of distribution companies of over Rs 250 billion. The tariffs have been increased at the time when the fuel costs have fallen by over 49 percent.

On top of this, contingent liabilities have increased exponentially in the sector. Today, the circular debt of the sector stands at almost Rs 630 billion, over 2percent of the GDP. Sooner or later, this debt will have to be retired, as happened in 2012-13, if a breakdown is to be avoided in supplies due to liquidity problems in the sector.

IMF also claims on behalf of the Government, that power load-shedding has been substantially reduced, especially in industry. Evidence to the contrary is the large continuing demand-supply gap according to NEPRA, and the fact that electricity consumption per industrial consumer has fallen in nine out of ten distribution companies, in comparison to the level achieved in the pre-load-shedding years.

Tax Reforms

The IMF Twelfth Review has highlighted, as one of the key successes of the Program, the over two percent points increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio. Much of the improvement has come in 2015-16. How has this been achieved? The main contribution is actually from enhancement in effective tax rates and not by broadening of the various tax bases. The tax structure has become more regressive and created more distortions in economic activity. Furthermore, various levies which used to be the part of non-tax revenues prior to the IMF Program were renamed as ‘other taxes’ and added to the tax revenue collected by the FBR to arrive at ‘new’ tax – to – GDP ratio. Such a practice has made the ‘new tax – to – GDP ratio non-comparable with the pre-IMF Program period.

The biggest failure is in lack of development of the direct tax system. The elite continues to enjoy wide ranging tax exemptions and concessions like the virtually no or low taxation of global income, profits of private companies, agricultural income and unearned capital incomes. The IMF clearly prefers not to antagonize the ruling elite through its reform agenda.

Improvement in Living Standards

Contrary to the claims by the IMF, living standards have probably fallen in Pakistan during the tenure of the Program. A number of reforms undertaken have contributed to rising unemployment and poverty.

The anti-poor actions include, firstly, the rise in input costs of fertilizer and electricity in agriculture due to hike in power and gas tariffs and additional taxation in the form of the GIDC. The result is that food prices have risen faster than the overall CPI and wages of unskilled workers. Today, Pakistan has the extremely serious problem of malnutrition. In the 2016 ranking of the Global Hunger Index, Pakistan has the 11th lowest position, even below Bangladesh, out of 118 countries. The non-implementation of the PMs agricultural package of September 2015 under the IMF pressure has contributed to the recent debacle in the sector.

Secondly, the primary adjustment mechanism for achieving the fiscal deficit targets in the Program has been large cut backs of up to 30percent in budgeted development spending by the Federal and Provincial governments. In 2015-16 alone these cuts have implied less employment generation of almost 300,000 jobs.Thirdly, hikes in indirect taxes have affected the cost of living adversely. This includes the levy of minimum import tariffs on basic food and other items and jump in GST rates on petroleum products, especially HSD oil.Fourthly, the decline in exports has contributed to loss of employment in labor-intensive sectors like SMEs and textiles. Consequently, as highlighted earlier, the underlying unemployment rate has gone beyond 8 percent. Fifthly, social indicators have shown only minor improvement in three years. This is due particularly to the pressure on Provincial governments to spend less on social and other sectors so as to generate large cash surpluses.

Anti-Export Bias

According to the original Program projections, exports were expected to show a steady annual growth rate of 8 percent and reach $30 billion by 2015-16. Instead, they have been falling since 2012-13 to below $22 billion last year, a short fall of over 23percent. This is perhaps one of the single most important failures of the Program. It has adversely impacted on growth and employment in the country and frustrated the achievement of greater self-reliance.

How did the Program reinforce the anti-export bias? The record level of external borrowings during the last three years has led to a form of ‘Dutch Disease’. Larger reserves, based completely on external borrowing, have created artificial stability in the value of the rupee, thereby reducing competitiveness. Enhancement of electricity tariffs by over 40percent and gas price to industry by 64percent, further affected competitiveness. In an effort to meet the Program revenue targets, FBR has held back over Rs 200 billion of refunds, leading to liquidity problems for exporters. Further, levy of a minimum import duty on raw materials and intermediate goods has added to costs.

Today, the decline in ability to service external debt obligations, including those to the IMF, is clearly demonstrated by the phenomenal increase in the external debt to exports ratio. It was 193percent in 2012-13 and has risen to 266percent by the end of 2015-16. It is likely to continue rising and go beyond 300percent by 2017-18. There is no other option now in the post-Program scenario but to present a strong export incentive package, including significant depreciation of the Rupee.

External Financing Requirement

The original Program projections were that external financing requirements, consisting of external debt amortization and the current account deficit, would reach $9.2 billion by 2016-17 and fall to $8 billion in 2017-18. However, following the much larger build up of external debt, the latest estimates of the financing requirement in the 12th Review is $ 10.9 billion in 2016-17, rising to $13.2 billion in 2017-18.

However, these estimates are based on significant positive growth in remittances and exports and a big jump in FDI. This is highly unlikely given the current trends. A more realistic estimate of external financing requirement is $15 billion in 2016-17 and $18 billion in 2017-18. This is more than 5percent of the GDP, which is considered the danger point. Part of this requirement will have to be met by a sizeable depletion of foreign exchange reserves. There is a high likelihood that by June 2018, reserves may fall to about half of the present level.

Where is the sustainability of our external position? Has the IMF Program reduced our vulnerabilities? Are we doomed to go back once again to the IMF? Will conditionalities next time go beyond the usual prior actions? Already, two weeks after the end of the IMF Program, Pakistan has been forced to float relatively high cost bonds externally of $1 billion. This indicates a lack of confidence in the sustainability of reserves in coming months and years.

Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the IMF Program, the economy has begun to unravel. Agricultural growth was negative last year and the prospects for the current cotton crop are not much better. Growth of the large-scale manufacturing sector has also turned negative in the last four months for which data is available. Seven out of the twelve industrial groups are showing declining output. The fall in exports continues and the trade deficit has risen sharply. Remittances are also contracting, along with a sharp reduction in FDI. FBR tax revenue growth has plummeted and large borrowing has been resorted to by the Federal Government from SBP. Development releases of funds have been relatively small and the process of implementation of CPEC infrastructure projects is very slow. Contingent liabilities have reached alarming levels and the bleeding of public sector enterprises/utilities continues. Can we still say that the reforms implemented during the tenure of the Fund Program have left the economy in a ‘sustainable position’? The answer, unfortunately, is an unambiguous no.

 

* The authors have worked for the Ministry of Finance and dealt with the IMF at the highest level for a long time.

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Maryam Safdar is exaggerating the seriousness of the procedure.”just to gain sympathetic element from masses to divert attention from #PanamaLeaks

  1. AThe procedure takes less than 45 minutes, preparation takes about an hour and it requires a couple of days in hospital for observation ‏@AsadKharal  Maryam Safdar is exaggerating the seriousness of the procedure.”just to gain sumpathetic element from masses to divert from #PanamaLeaks
     
     
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    The procedure takes less than 45 minutes, preparation takes about an hour and it requires a couple of days in hospital for observation

     
  3. Following procedurennn according to a friend UK doctor working in same hospital. “Atrial Fibrillation Ablation is NOT an open heart surgery

     

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