It is unfortunate that, rather than taking ownership of important decisions, our officials generally seem more willing to make even good ones appear to be the result of some unavoidable obligation to the country’s foreign creditors. This constant shifting of responsibility, or rather blame, to external stakeholders has meant that even necessary policy changes at the state level are publicly seen as the result of interference from ruthless and unsympathetic foreign lenders, rather than measures necessary to be taken in the future. the best interests of the country. Take, for example, the Minister of Finance, who, at a recent press conference on right-sizing the government, seemed at pains to explain that the decision to reduce the size of our supposedly bloated government had to be made because of the structural references established by the government. IMF. Although the minister admitted that the measure was also in Pakistan’s interest, one wonders why it was made to look like an IMF recipe rather than a voluntarily accepted reform.
The fact is that the size of government needs to be reduced. The country cannot continue to bear the burden of a large and inefficient bureaucracy, given its severely deteriorated economic situation. The Minister himself, during his press conference, revealed that many of the public sector entities, departments and their directorates that were put on the chopping block admitted that they did not have much to show in terms of their achievements in the last 20 or 30 years, but I still wanted another six months to get results. This would seem to be an admission that although these entities knew how to change things, they chose not to, and for decades, no less. While they fortunately did not get another lifeline, one still wonders why the move to reduce them had to be framed as an obligation to a foreign credit agency.
Indeed, the government should have been proud to announce that it was taking an important step to hold public servants and their departments accountable for the funds they had been wasting for decades. The fact that he seemed unwilling to do so suggests not only a lack of concern about how the country’s resources have been and continue to be wasted, but also an apparent unwillingness to put an end to that waste. Perhaps that is why the Finance Minister dodged questions at the same press conference about why judges and certain categories of bureaucrats had been granted hefty salary increases in recent months. He also did not directly respond to questions about whether certain “favored” ministries and departments would face cuts. The Finance Minister, himself an appointed technocrat, may sometimes feel obliged to deflect responsibility from the elected government. However, it is hoped that this will not prevent you from making the right decisions.
Published in Amanecer, January 9, 2025.
