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Pakistan is in a debt (death) trap

Pakistan has to reduce it expenditure and learn to live within its means.. and of course, actually get the middle class and wealthy to pay taxes !!! ( novel concept for pakistan )..

reduction of the defence spending, increase spending in education to stimulate growth would be good ideas too...
Defence spending has to drop to 10%. Including accounting of all perks, free electricity etc. if army want it it has to come out of their budget..

Munir is tooo stupid to realise he is stupid... that is the core problem.
Lowest IQ coas, on par if not worse than yahya
 
Pakistani economy suffers from pro-western politicians.

These westernized lackies are ready to sacrifice the whole country just to avoid an imaginery threat of FATF gray/blue/purple/WhateverYouSay list.

No Pakistani has ever realized that these lists are designed to enslave nations through threatening them with sanctions. Pakistan has put all its eggs in basket of west and now reaping its result.
 
I am hearing about it for a while now but I wonder why Pakistan hasn't defaulted so far. Not that I want it, but if their debt issue was as described then why haven't they declared bankruptcy till now? That ticking time bomb has been ticking so too long and hasn't exploded yet. Maybe, these are doomsday predictions and Pakistan's debt issue is not as bad as it is described and actually manageable ?
They would fight tooth and nail against going default. If they default, world will not be as accomodative as they have been with Srilanka in terms of restructuring loans and lettting them get back on feet unless they give up nuclear weapons and large part of its army. They will insist on democracy. All that wouldn't suit the military, so they would change as many leaders as possible (experts in international begging) to avoid that possibility.
 
increase spending in education to stimulate growth would be good ideas too...
Education offers a way but if you started today then you would see the results after maybe 20 years. Pakistan is paying the price of having become, and been, a "Security State", with the added irony that it is no longer secure,
 
Strangely, all elites of Pakistan knows they are sitting on a ticking debt death trap but no one seems to bothered about it, anyone knows why ?
It could be because:

1. Most have no say in how it’s handled
2. Are not allowed to participate in dealing with the problem
3. Know they would be on the hook to may a large part of it and want to kick the can down the road.

They just know how to live in their bubbles subconsciously hoping today is not the day the “unwashed” masses don’t come storm their gates, demanding bread.
 
Education offers a way but if you started today then you would see the results after maybe 20 years. Pakistan is paying the price of having become, and been, a "Security State", with the added irony that it is no longer secure,

Yes - exactly - agree.
 
Pakistani economy suffers from pro-western politicians.

These westernized lackies are ready to sacrifice the whole country just to avoid an imaginery threat of FATF gray/blue/purple/WhateverYouSay list.

No Pakistani has ever realized that these lists are designed to enslave nations through threatening them with sanctions. Pakistan has put all its eggs in basket of west and now reaping its result.

1. Corruption
2. Useless judiciary
3. Extremism and terrorism
4. Compromised GoP due to unconstitutional interventions of the army

PTI-led GOP wasn't perfect either. It had bad apples in its cadre who damaged the party. Some were involved in corruption. Punjab was also mismanaged and misgoverned. The first Finance Minister Asad Umer was a disaster. Economist Hafeez Sheikh managed to put things on the right track but military-backed PDM crashed the show.

Pakistan's largest trading partner is China but due to imports in large part = massive trade deficit.

CPEC is also financed through loans and not well-planned. Costly projects are undertaken to show progress to garner votes but fail to provide relief and benefits to the masses.

Pakistan has trade surplus with the West. This is due to hardwork of most productive citizens and companies. 80+ Western countries have created numerous jobs in Pakistan as well. This is one area where things are right but some in their blind hatred of the West want to destroy this part of the economy as well.

The alleged cypher politics damaged PTI even further and put the country in a no-win situation in view of already strained relations between US and Pakistan due to return of Taliban. Nobody benefits from this type of politics in the country.

Bloc politics does not suit Pakistan. West does not hamper growth but provides growth. Countries that have their priorities straight, are growing in these times as well. Only those are in trouble who are eager to pick fights with others instead of prioritizing productivity.
 
The person who started this thread should tell us all we need to know.
 
1. Corruption
2. Useless judiciary
3. Extremism and terrorism
4. Compromised GoP due to unconstitutional interventions of the army

PTI-led GOP wasn't perfect either. It had bad apples in its cadre who damaged the party. Some were involved in corruption. Punjab was also mismanaged and misgoverned. The first Finance Minister Asad Umer was a disaster. Economist Hafeez Sheikh managed to put things on the right track but military-backed PDM crashed the show.

Pakistan's largest trading partner is China but due to imports in large part = massive trade deficit.

CPEC is also financed through loans and not well-planned. Costly projects are undertaken to show progress to garner votes but fail to provide relief and benefits to the masses.

Pakistan has trade surplus with the West. This is due to hardwork of most productive citizens and companies. 80+ Western countries have created numerous jobs in Pakistan as well. This is one area where things are right but some in their blind hatred of the West want to destroy this part of the economy as well.

The alleged cypher politics damaged PTI even further and put the country in a no-win situation in view of already strained relations between US and Pakistan due to return of Taliban. Nobody benefits from this type of politics in the country.

Bloc politics does not suit Pakistan. West does not hamper growth but provides growth. Countries that have their priorities straight, are growing in these times as well. Only those are in trouble who are eager to pick fights with others instead of prioritizing productivity.
Look bro, Pakistani economy is in trouble. I guess we both agree on that.

Unfortunately your assumption of west is a Santa that comes to save people. No, their help always comes with political attachments. They will plant useless people, actually their lackies, in your country through training them in their universities and through financing them.

Pakistani economy has come a long way and no sane person would ask a country to depend on one side. China has huge benefit from dealing with west. It had good and bad results, they have almost lost Taiwan but they have become a global economic power.

Paktsan is different from China, Pakistan is a Muslim majority country hence hated by westerners by majority of them. This factor slowly but surely tries to align your country and society with western values under prrssure of IMF/FATF etc. Slowly breaking you, slowly changing your culture and slowly destroying your traditions. No matter how much you resist, the way your politocians and military men rule the country, they will eventually win.

Pakistan is militarily, governmentally, economically and politically aligned with west hence this miserable situation.

Pakistan has a huge labor force but unlike China, they leave the country for remittances. I have seen Pakistani workers, man they have screwed the concept of hardworking but they work for someone else. That's my point, your workers along with your talented people migrate to west and work for them at every level of their societies. At the end of story Pakistanis and Asians as a whole are insulted as refugees and invaders of western and Arab countries while we know that without these hardworking people, Arabs won't be able to clean their backside let alone harwork.

Pakistan has been suffering and suffering because of western imposed models on their politica, military and economy. You can't blame others for it.
 
Once a Govt is compelled to take loans to repay previous loans, once it loses its ability to control fiscal events and activities, once a govt cannot reclaim ownership of assets it was compelled to mortgage.. its best to wipe the slate clean with declaring a state of default and start afresh.Provided of course, the courage exists to make the changes necessary to go forward.

View attachment 950905

KARACHI:
During the last week the Pakistani Rupee achieved a historic first. It broke through the Rs300 barrier against the Dollar. Other firsts were also recorded: The price of petrol broke through the Rs300 per litre barrier. The cost of a unit of electricity rose to a historic high. More increases are forecast for the coming weeks.

Inflation is on the rampage. It is near impossible now for the poor to cover their basic living expenses. Defiant protestors are taking to the streets to burn their electric bills in public. Retailers are observing “shutter down” days to register their disapproval or disgust at the way the economy is being managed.

All this has not happened suddenly. It has been in the making for a long time. Corrupt, incompetent and in many cases illiterate politicians have been voted into power time and again. This the result of a sham democracy that has enabled feudal landlords, land grabbers and gangsters to terrify and compel a hapless nation to vote for them. And once voted into the corridors of power their main interest is to enrich themselves. The public be damned.

Can Pakistan be fixed and put back on the track? The answer is yes. But doing so will need the sort of courage and daring that has been lacking in the past. As it stands today, there is a transition government in place with a constitutional mandate to hold elections within 90 days and hand over power to an “elected” government.

This is a recipe for disaster. Elections under the present system will bring the same old crooks back to power who will, without doubt, hammer the final nail into the coffin. Saving Pakistan will involve two sets of measures – short term and long term.

Look at the short term first: Pakistan is choking on debt. Tracheostomy needs to be applied immediately. Consider that in the coming fiscal year the government’s own budget estimate puts government revenue by tax collection at Rs7 trillion. The same estimate puts expenses at Rs14.5 trillion. Of this Rs14.5 trillion, Rs7.4 trillion is for debt repayment. Consider the absurdity of this: The entirety of government revenue fails even to cover debt repayment!

We are in a debt trap, really a death trap. The only way to escape it is to place an immediate moratorium on all debt repayments – interest and principal. This should apply to all lenders – institutional and private. At the same time negotiations must begin on sensible restructuring with the expectation that all lenders should be ready to take a substantial haircut.

This is not a step for the faint hearted. And certainly not a step that the present transition government will take, especially since its finance minister is a former World Bank executive. Her and her ilk consider default, which is what a moratorium will mean, to be anathema.

To be clear, default will have unpleasant consequences. But they will be nowhere as serious, or irreversible, as death. In fact, it (default) will give us room to put our house in order. We have a steady stream of remittances which last year was of the order of $30 billion. Our exports are of the same order of magnitude. What will be needed is a drastic reduction in imports, which are out of control, and a zero-based budgeting (ZBB) approach to government expense.

Put all this together: moratorium, debt restructuring, haircut, remittances, export earnings, cut in imports and ZBB for government expenses and you have potentially a lifesaving formula.

To design and implement this, the composition of the transition government must be changed. Anyone who has anything to do with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank must be removed. These are people whose DNA is infected with a virus that gives them resistance to any solution that does not involve taking more debt.

Once a competent transition government is in place its mandate must be changed: Elections are to be put off as long as is needed to put the economy back on track. And the primary mandate must become economic and political restructuring. Because once the economy is saved, putting it back in the hands of the people who brought us here borders on insanity.

In the longer term, the political system must be redesigned to, in effect, interdict the path of the usual crooks – feudals, land grabbers and gangsters – to parliament. And instead, open the door to people of competence, integrity and decency to play their role in running the nation. This is not impossible to do. Several measures come to mind. The simplest of these, and the easiest to achieve, is to give the right to vote only to people who have completed matriculation.

Voters who have a basic level of education will not be easily intimidated or fooled. They will be able to vote according to their conscience rather than being commanded to vote by a local landlord. They will welcome new entrants who represent a departure from the dismal past and truly promise a new beginning.

There are self-appointed guardians of democracy, especially in the West, who will protest that this is undemocratic. They need to understand that democracy does not come in one shade or colour. And that there is no manual of democracy descended from the sky which says that there must be a vote for everyone. In fact, in the Islamic tradition “democracy” involved consultation with those who were the most able to provide it.

Pakistan needs to find its own way. We can no longer afford to remain slave to those who value their own interests above ours.

The writer is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an engineering degree from MIT

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2023.
Some recent sovereign defaults are Venezuela, Sri Lanka and Lebanon. How well are they doing?

its best to wipe the slate clean with declaring a state of default and start afresh.
Works well when your PC is hanging. But may not be the panacea for a large country.

Look bro, Pakistani economy is in trouble. I guess we both agree on that.

Unfortunately your assumption of west is a Santa that comes to save people. No, their help always comes with political attachments. They will plant useless people, actually their lackies, in your country through training them in their universities and through financing them.

Pakistani economy has come a long way and no sane person would ask a country to depend on one side. China has huge benefit from dealing with west. It had good and bad results, they have almost lost Taiwan but they have become a global economic power.

Paktsan is different from China, Pakistan is a Muslim majority country hence hated by westerners by majority of them. This factor slowly but surely tries to align your country and society with western values under prrssure of IMF/FATF etc. Slowly breaking you, slowly changing your culture and slowly destroying your traditions. No matter how much you resist, the way your politocians and military men rule the country, they will eventually win.

Pakistan is militarily, governmentally, economically and politically aligned with west hence this miserable situation.

Pakistan has a huge labor force but unlike China, they leave the country for remittances. I have seen Pakistani workers, man they have screwed the concept of hardworking but they work for someone else. That's my point, your workers along with your talented people migrate to west and work for them at every level of their societies. At the end of story Pakistanis and Asians as a whole are insulted as refugees and invaders of western and Arab countries while we know that without these hardworking people, Arabs won't be able to clean their backside let alone harwork.

Pakistan has been suffering and suffering because of western imposed models on their politica, military and economy. You can't blame others for it.
What in your opinion are the changes needed to overcome these issues? Would you recommend Iranian model to solve these problems?
 
"The simplest of these, and the easiest to achieve, is to give the right to vote only to people who have completed matriculation.
Voters who have a basic level of education will not be easily intimidated or fooled."

Yes, the best way to help the poor and uneducated is to marginalize them and take away their rights further. He is an elitist himself who really doesn't care about them. If his family was among them, he wouldn't be saying, they are stupid and cowardly.
 
"The simplest of these, and the easiest to achieve, is to give the right to vote only to people who have completed matriculation.
Voters who have a basic level of education will not be easily intimidated or fooled."

Yes, the best way to help the poor and uneducated is to marginalize them and take away their rights further. He is an elitist himself who really doesn't care about them. If his family was among them, he wouldn't be saying, they are stupid and cowardly.
You have feudal lords in the PPP using their truckloads of slaves in interior Sindh that help them win elections in the province. The feudal lords in Balochistan do the same. They also use the money from Karachi to buy out influential politicians in South Punjab who always win because they have scores of uneducated voters supporting them.

PMLN doesn't have feudal lords, but scores of uneducated supporters in central Punjab that vote for Nawaz Sharif, come rain or shine. They don't have any knowledge of what his policies mean nor do they care. They think the Sharif family are royalty.

However, plenty of educated people vote for PPP or PMLN as well. I've literally seen educated people here in the US (originally from Lahore) who still support PMLN, lol.
 
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They need a Manmohan Singh, but public isn’t ready for that yet.
world elites benefit most from govt debt, if they were to pay everything back it would make govt whole (esp true in places like china’s local govt debt)

but theyd rather wait for mass chaos and societal breakdown rather than do the right thing and pay back money that wasnt theirs
 

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