AZ1
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and yet you used if like it did. It didnt a d failure and waste of money by PMLN. Come to reality from dream of if and but.
PML-N responsible for the economic mess: ICST
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Cash GK
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before you talk to me
no hope for you bugze ali.. here is bugze imran
World Cup, seriously? It was team effort
hospital based on donations, he didnt do squat himself
you didnt mention a single thing worth appreciating
give me facts and figures that the country got
dont just add the word "packages"[/QUOTE]
??? you are quoting the wrong dude I hope and I had already answered the person.
ziaulislam
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1. its fifth grade science that loan has nothing to do with rupee value..i can explain it to you if you want to listen but how i explain it my 4th grade brother is as such..rupee is simply a note and the value behind it based upon economic indicators and productivity, so if you devalue you might think the loans increased but no... the rupee value itself drops, interests are increased, govt makes more money due to inflation and revenue ... simply adjusting the absolute increase in rupee loans..SO NO LOANS DONT INCREASE WITH devalution, value of apple a country produce doesnt change with rupee falling!..the reason why countries do devaluation is to keep inflation and encourage investment
2. PML N spent 10 billion dollars to artificially keep the rupee high because it knows no one understands fifth grade economy 101..so what happened..
this happened..suddenly Pakistan claimed that a pencil that actual value is 1 rs is now valued 10 rs..people from all over the world(mostly politicians) brought their pencils and got 10 rs..govt basically handed over 9rs for free..this is what happens when you claim something has a value when it doesn't (in this case it was the rupee)
3. why did china, india and turkey devalued their currencies more than pakistan from 2013-2017 if your logic of better rupee really works
why dont we simply make rupee better overnight to rupees 50 and pay off all of our loans..?..
think over it you might soon realize how stupid you sound and that you even lack basic understanding of how currency works
govt has done excellent job in fiscal area but is legging behind FBR and energy policy(at least hasnt made one public yet)..for example PML N had a better vision when it comes to power production during its first 6 months, its cleared all the dues and decided to establish coal projects in gadddani under competitive bidding BUT it simply backed up from this due to oil and commission mafia later on
so 300 billion rupees 26 km rail tract is more important than 1700 km ML1 which would have cost around 700 billion
it all depends upon priorities ....metros should be built but cost effective only..you cant relate a 50 km plus network which cots 1/4 the price of orange line that will pay for itself and is sponsored by international reknown donor agency rather than CPEC related secrecy shrouded loans
having said that orange metro is neither good or bad...bad is what they did with our power, gas, exports, FOREIGN LOANS(local loans dont matter) and rupee value
FACTS AND FIGURES GOOGLE IT I WILL GIVE YOU ONE EXAMPLE
price of electricity and gas was reduced for textile and duties were removed on imports of machinery
Path-Finder
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this is a 13 month old article but no doubt the last year of tooi hakumat was the worst episode.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1575162/2-economic-performance-4-year-report-card-failing-grade-pml-n/
Economic performance in 4-year report card, failing grade for PML-N
By Shahbaz Rana
Published: December 4, 2017
ISLAMABAD : The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) promised much in its election manifesto but delivered little in terms of economic performance.
The gap between what was said and what was done has pushed the country into a deep debt trap, increased income inequality, and an increasing number of question marks hovering over the economic outlook.
Foreign investors are concerned by macroeconomic indicators, and the possibility of Pakistan needing another bailout is much more real than ever before.
Barring progress on the pace of inflation and increasing national output, which grew from 3.7 per cent to 5.3 per cent in four years, the government’s performance remained questionable on all economic fronts. Even the annual economic growth of 5.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2016-17 was the result of growth in the services sector, which is not labour intensive.
In its election manifesto, the government had promised to increase the economic growth rate to 6 per cent by the end of the fourth year, and 7 per cent by June 2018.
PPP, PML-N agree to work together to avert technocrat govt
According to a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, Pakistan remains near the bottom of the Global Hunger Index, standing at 106 among 119 developing countries ranked.
In June 2013, the official unemployment rate in the country was 6.24 per cent, but due to growing joblessness, the government has not announced unemployment figures for the last two fiscal years, showed a State Bank of Pakistan report.
The literacy rate, which was 60 per cent in 2013, actually slipped to 58 per cent in June 2016. Figures for the current year have not been released yet. Health expenditure, which stood at a meagre 0.56 per cent of total national output in 2013, has been decreased even further to 0.46 per cent in June 2017, according to the SBP’s annual report on the state of the economy.
In its latest report, which covered the four-year economic performance of the PML-N, the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME) noted that the incumbent government has failed to fully implement its election manifesto on the economic front and has achieved just six of its 89 announced goals.
According to the report, progress has been reversed on the elimination of VIP culture by reducing expenses on the Prime Minister’s office and the Presidency, appointing independent professional boards of state-owned entities, eliminating circular debt, and notifying the tariffs determined by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.
Even in areas where it had initially shown some progress, performance deteriorated during the January-June 2017 period, says the report from the Islamabad-based, independent think tank.
Growing debt burden
Former finance minister Ishaq Dar claimed that Pakistan’s economy had turned around and the country did not need another International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout. However, the situation has already worsened. From July through October of this fiscal year, the federal government has obtained $2.3 billion in foreign loans, including $1.02 billion in commercial loans.
PML-N’s economic scorecard: a story of under-performance
A team of Finance Ministry and SBP officials is already in the United States to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from the debt markets by floating sovereign bonds aimed at creating some space till the time a new programme is negotiated with the IMF, sources said.
The country’s official foreign currency reserves, which peaked to $19 billion, slid on the back of foreign borrowings to $13.54 billion as of November 17, barely enough to finance two-and-a-half months of imports.
The federal government consumed a significant amount of foreign currency reserves to manage the rupee-dollar exchange rate parity while turning down proposals to let the currency devalue to its ‘real value’ of around Rs118 to a dollar. The current parity is Rs105.4 per dollar.
The biggest criticism against the incumbent government, however, is the massive increase in external debt and liabilities, which have increased to $83 billion as of June 2017. In June 2013, a few weeks after the PML-N government came into power, external debt and liabilities stood at $61 billion.
The government is also accused of twice amending the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act of 2005 in an effort to understate the growing debt burden. Against the total debt of Rs15.56 trillion in June 2013, the country’s total debt has now increased to Rs24 trillion, which is equal to 75.3 per cent of the GDP and far above the ‘safe’ threshold.
Since the government has not been able to enhance exports and attract significant foreign direct investment, the external sector has remained under pressure. In June 2013, the current account deficit – the gap between external receivables and payments – was $2.5 billion or 1.1 per cent of the GDP. The government closed the fiscal year 2016-17 at a record deficit of $12.1 billion, equal to 4 per cent of the GDP.
PML-N’s performance in two years – a blend of effort and luck
That record is likely to be short lived, as the government has already booked a $5-billion current account deficit during the July-October period.
Exports, which stood at $24.5 billion in June 2013, have decreased to $20.42 billion as of June 2017, according to the SBP annual report.
Poor fiscal performance
In June 2013, the country had booked Rs1.834 trillion as its budget deficit, equal to 8.2 per cent of GDP. This figure was inclusive of the Rs480-billion circular debt payment the PML-N government cleared after coming into power, but booked in the last year of the PPP tenure.
However, at the end of the fiscal year 2016-17, the budget deficit widened to a record Rs1.864 trillion, excluding Rs800 billion as circular debt. In terms of GDP, the 2016-17 budget deficit was equal to 5.8 per cent of GDP, which was far higher than the 4.1per cent limit approved by parliament. After including the impact of unsettled circular debt, the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP would increase to the same level in the last fiscal year that the county witnessed in 2013.
The extremely poor position of the fiscal and external fronts belies the official claims of turning around the economy. Instead, the worsening situation forced the chief of army staff to give a wakeup call to the government. The army chief warned the authorities about the “sky-high debt” and “abysmally low tax base”.
In June 2013, the FBR’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 8.7 per cent, which increased to 10.5 per cent in 2016-17, but remained far below the government’s target of 15 per cent. In absolute terms, the FBR’s tax collection increased from Rs1.946 trillion to Rs3.361 trillion due to the imposition of roughly Rs1.4 trillion in new taxes.
The government also failed to meet its promise of rationalising sales tax by ensuring standard rates for all items.
Nawaz tells party MPs to improve performance
In fact, a recent World Bank report suggests that Pakistan is losing Rs3.2 trillion in revenue every year due to weak tax compliance and enforcement.
Core macroeconomic indicators remain disappointing
The government failed to show notable progress on the two most critical macroeconomic areas – investment and national savings. The investment-to-GDP ratio inched up from 15 per cent in June 2013 to 15.8 per cent four years later. It was well below the government’s targets, and Dar would conveniently fail to bring it up.
The PML-N always boasts of promoting private investment in the country — a claim far from reality. In June 2013, private sector investment was 9.8 per cent of GDP. At the end of June 2017, it stood at 9.9 per cent, according to the SBP report.
The same is the case with national savings. In June 2013, Gross National Savings as a percentage of GDP was 13.9 per cent, which actually decreased to 13.1 per cent in June 2017.
PSEs’ performance
Another poorly managed area was the functioning of Public Sector Enterprises. The PML-N government claimed that it would privatise all loss-making enterprises and reduce their losses. The numbers tell a different story.
PML-N to grill ministers over performance
In June 2013, the PSEs’ debt and liabilities were Rs495 billion. By June 2017, they had rocketed up to Rs1.107 trillion, according to the SBP annual report. There was a net 123 per cent increase in PSEs’ losses in just four years. This was primarily because the government did not settle the circular debt and parked huge sums outside the budget.
In the energy sector, the government was unable to reform Nepra. Likewise, reforms could not be introduced in power distribution and generation companies. These entities kept causing heavy losses, which the government tried to cover by charging various surcharges from consumers.
The PML-N also failed to meet its election promise of permanently eliminating circular debt, which has piled up to Rs400 billion. By including the stock of debt that is parked in a holding company, the total circular debt would jump to Rs800 billion.
The government somehow managed to build the confidence of the private sector, but it was still not up to the mark. The two components where it performed well were infrastructure building and creating job opportunities.
There was no development on the goals of converting at least 50 per cent of remittances from overseas Pakistanis into investments and reforming tariffs to eliminate anti-export bias. The PML-N could not establish an equity fund to facilitate investment from the private and public sectors. It also could not fulfil its promise to tax all income, including agriculture income, and failed to reduce the number of federal and provincial taxes, according to PRIME.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1575162/2-economic-performance-4-year-report-card-failing-grade-pml-n/
Economic performance in 4-year report card, failing grade for PML-N
By Shahbaz Rana
Published: December 4, 2017
ISLAMABAD : The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) promised much in its election manifesto but delivered little in terms of economic performance.
The gap between what was said and what was done has pushed the country into a deep debt trap, increased income inequality, and an increasing number of question marks hovering over the economic outlook.
Foreign investors are concerned by macroeconomic indicators, and the possibility of Pakistan needing another bailout is much more real than ever before.
Barring progress on the pace of inflation and increasing national output, which grew from 3.7 per cent to 5.3 per cent in four years, the government’s performance remained questionable on all economic fronts. Even the annual economic growth of 5.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2016-17 was the result of growth in the services sector, which is not labour intensive.
In its election manifesto, the government had promised to increase the economic growth rate to 6 per cent by the end of the fourth year, and 7 per cent by June 2018.
PPP, PML-N agree to work together to avert technocrat govt
According to a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, Pakistan remains near the bottom of the Global Hunger Index, standing at 106 among 119 developing countries ranked.
In June 2013, the official unemployment rate in the country was 6.24 per cent, but due to growing joblessness, the government has not announced unemployment figures for the last two fiscal years, showed a State Bank of Pakistan report.
The literacy rate, which was 60 per cent in 2013, actually slipped to 58 per cent in June 2016. Figures for the current year have not been released yet. Health expenditure, which stood at a meagre 0.56 per cent of total national output in 2013, has been decreased even further to 0.46 per cent in June 2017, according to the SBP’s annual report on the state of the economy.
In its latest report, which covered the four-year economic performance of the PML-N, the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME) noted that the incumbent government has failed to fully implement its election manifesto on the economic front and has achieved just six of its 89 announced goals.
According to the report, progress has been reversed on the elimination of VIP culture by reducing expenses on the Prime Minister’s office and the Presidency, appointing independent professional boards of state-owned entities, eliminating circular debt, and notifying the tariffs determined by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.
Even in areas where it had initially shown some progress, performance deteriorated during the January-June 2017 period, says the report from the Islamabad-based, independent think tank.
Growing debt burden
Former finance minister Ishaq Dar claimed that Pakistan’s economy had turned around and the country did not need another International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout. However, the situation has already worsened. From July through October of this fiscal year, the federal government has obtained $2.3 billion in foreign loans, including $1.02 billion in commercial loans.
PML-N’s economic scorecard: a story of under-performance
A team of Finance Ministry and SBP officials is already in the United States to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from the debt markets by floating sovereign bonds aimed at creating some space till the time a new programme is negotiated with the IMF, sources said.
The country’s official foreign currency reserves, which peaked to $19 billion, slid on the back of foreign borrowings to $13.54 billion as of November 17, barely enough to finance two-and-a-half months of imports.
The federal government consumed a significant amount of foreign currency reserves to manage the rupee-dollar exchange rate parity while turning down proposals to let the currency devalue to its ‘real value’ of around Rs118 to a dollar. The current parity is Rs105.4 per dollar.
The biggest criticism against the incumbent government, however, is the massive increase in external debt and liabilities, which have increased to $83 billion as of June 2017. In June 2013, a few weeks after the PML-N government came into power, external debt and liabilities stood at $61 billion.
The government is also accused of twice amending the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act of 2005 in an effort to understate the growing debt burden. Against the total debt of Rs15.56 trillion in June 2013, the country’s total debt has now increased to Rs24 trillion, which is equal to 75.3 per cent of the GDP and far above the ‘safe’ threshold.
Since the government has not been able to enhance exports and attract significant foreign direct investment, the external sector has remained under pressure. In June 2013, the current account deficit – the gap between external receivables and payments – was $2.5 billion or 1.1 per cent of the GDP. The government closed the fiscal year 2016-17 at a record deficit of $12.1 billion, equal to 4 per cent of the GDP.
PML-N’s performance in two years – a blend of effort and luck
That record is likely to be short lived, as the government has already booked a $5-billion current account deficit during the July-October period.
Exports, which stood at $24.5 billion in June 2013, have decreased to $20.42 billion as of June 2017, according to the SBP annual report.
Poor fiscal performance
In June 2013, the country had booked Rs1.834 trillion as its budget deficit, equal to 8.2 per cent of GDP. This figure was inclusive of the Rs480-billion circular debt payment the PML-N government cleared after coming into power, but booked in the last year of the PPP tenure.
However, at the end of the fiscal year 2016-17, the budget deficit widened to a record Rs1.864 trillion, excluding Rs800 billion as circular debt. In terms of GDP, the 2016-17 budget deficit was equal to 5.8 per cent of GDP, which was far higher than the 4.1per cent limit approved by parliament. After including the impact of unsettled circular debt, the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP would increase to the same level in the last fiscal year that the county witnessed in 2013.
The extremely poor position of the fiscal and external fronts belies the official claims of turning around the economy. Instead, the worsening situation forced the chief of army staff to give a wakeup call to the government. The army chief warned the authorities about the “sky-high debt” and “abysmally low tax base”.
In June 2013, the FBR’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 8.7 per cent, which increased to 10.5 per cent in 2016-17, but remained far below the government’s target of 15 per cent. In absolute terms, the FBR’s tax collection increased from Rs1.946 trillion to Rs3.361 trillion due to the imposition of roughly Rs1.4 trillion in new taxes.
The government also failed to meet its promise of rationalising sales tax by ensuring standard rates for all items.
Nawaz tells party MPs to improve performance
In fact, a recent World Bank report suggests that Pakistan is losing Rs3.2 trillion in revenue every year due to weak tax compliance and enforcement.
Core macroeconomic indicators remain disappointing
The government failed to show notable progress on the two most critical macroeconomic areas – investment and national savings. The investment-to-GDP ratio inched up from 15 per cent in June 2013 to 15.8 per cent four years later. It was well below the government’s targets, and Dar would conveniently fail to bring it up.
The PML-N always boasts of promoting private investment in the country — a claim far from reality. In June 2013, private sector investment was 9.8 per cent of GDP. At the end of June 2017, it stood at 9.9 per cent, according to the SBP report.
The same is the case with national savings. In June 2013, Gross National Savings as a percentage of GDP was 13.9 per cent, which actually decreased to 13.1 per cent in June 2017.
PSEs’ performance
Another poorly managed area was the functioning of Public Sector Enterprises. The PML-N government claimed that it would privatise all loss-making enterprises and reduce their losses. The numbers tell a different story.
PML-N to grill ministers over performance
In June 2013, the PSEs’ debt and liabilities were Rs495 billion. By June 2017, they had rocketed up to Rs1.107 trillion, according to the SBP annual report. There was a net 123 per cent increase in PSEs’ losses in just four years. This was primarily because the government did not settle the circular debt and parked huge sums outside the budget.
In the energy sector, the government was unable to reform Nepra. Likewise, reforms could not be introduced in power distribution and generation companies. These entities kept causing heavy losses, which the government tried to cover by charging various surcharges from consumers.
The PML-N also failed to meet its election promise of permanently eliminating circular debt, which has piled up to Rs400 billion. By including the stock of debt that is parked in a holding company, the total circular debt would jump to Rs800 billion.
The government somehow managed to build the confidence of the private sector, but it was still not up to the mark. The two components where it performed well were infrastructure building and creating job opportunities.
There was no development on the goals of converting at least 50 per cent of remittances from overseas Pakistanis into investments and reforming tariffs to eliminate anti-export bias. The PML-N could not establish an equity fund to facilitate investment from the private and public sectors. It also could not fulfil its promise to tax all income, including agriculture income, and failed to reduce the number of federal and provincial taxes, according to PRIME.
airmarshal
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The PMLN government deliberately ruined economy. It was in line with making Pakistan weak so that it serves the interests of foreign powers more easily. To PMLN and PPP, foreign powers are source of strength. These two parties have always acted as pimps of foreign powers and promoted themselves as facilitators.
Imad.Khan
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i see you are still trying to dodge the question, perhaps you are just a pessimistic person or worse have ulterior motives, its hard to say but would like to give benefit of doubt and hope its the first one.
When has PTI taken credit of LNG deal? The changes required take time, when you sow a seed it takes time for it to fruit. Be patient, atleast we know that our tax money is not being spent on white elephants for kickbacks, the rest will happen in due time.
lol you are very delusional and as usual falling for the propaganda by your media. Have you ever considered that info you are being feed might have ulterior motives. Just do some research.
Going by your logic there should be no competition, there should only be 1 factory for each product in the whole country because it will take the profits from the other company. See how absurd that sounds
ziaulislam
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Key failures were lack of refoems in power sector and FBR..this led to panic in 2016 which meant adhoc measures, manipulation and thus resulting in overvaluation of rupee undue taxation on exports and increase indirect taxationthis is a 13 month old article but no doubt the last year of tooi hakumat was the worst episode.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1575162/2-economic-performance-4-year-report-card-failing-grade-pml-n/
Economic performance in 4-year report card, failing grade for PML-N
By Shahbaz Rana
Published: December 4, 2017
ISLAMABAD : The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) promised much in its election manifesto but delivered little in terms of economic performance.
The gap between what was said and what was done has pushed the country into a deep debt trap, increased income inequality, and an increasing number of question marks hovering over the economic outlook.
Foreign investors are concerned by macroeconomic indicators, and the possibility of Pakistan needing another bailout is much more real than ever before.
Barring progress on the pace of inflation and increasing national output, which grew from 3.7 per cent to 5.3 per cent in four years, the government’s performance remained questionable on all economic fronts. Even the annual economic growth of 5.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2016-17 was the result of growth in the services sector, which is not labour intensive.
In its election manifesto, the government had promised to increase the economic growth rate to 6 per cent by the end of the fourth year, and 7 per cent by June 2018.
PPP, PML-N agree to work together to avert technocrat govt
According to a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, Pakistan remains near the bottom of the Global Hunger Index, standing at 106 among 119 developing countries ranked.
In June 2013, the official unemployment rate in the country was 6.24 per cent, but due to growing joblessness, the government has not announced unemployment figures for the last two fiscal years, showed a State Bank of Pakistan report.
The literacy rate, which was 60 per cent in 2013, actually slipped to 58 per cent in June 2016. Figures for the current year have not been released yet. Health expenditure, which stood at a meagre 0.56 per cent of total national output in 2013, has been decreased even further to 0.46 per cent in June 2017, according to the SBP’s annual report on the state of the economy.
In its latest report, which covered the four-year economic performance of the PML-N, the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME) noted that the incumbent government has failed to fully implement its election manifesto on the economic front and has achieved just six of its 89 announced goals.
According to the report, progress has been reversed on the elimination of VIP culture by reducing expenses on the Prime Minister’s office and the Presidency, appointing independent professional boards of state-owned entities, eliminating circular debt, and notifying the tariffs determined by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.
Even in areas where it had initially shown some progress, performance deteriorated during the January-June 2017 period, says the report from the Islamabad-based, independent think tank.
Growing debt burden
Former finance minister Ishaq Dar claimed that Pakistan’s economy had turned around and the country did not need another International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout. However, the situation has already worsened. From July through October of this fiscal year, the federal government has obtained $2.3 billion in foreign loans, including $1.02 billion in commercial loans.
PML-N’s economic scorecard: a story of under-performance
A team of Finance Ministry and SBP officials is already in the United States to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from the debt markets by floating sovereign bonds aimed at creating some space till the time a new programme is negotiated with the IMF, sources said.
The country’s official foreign currency reserves, which peaked to $19 billion, slid on the back of foreign borrowings to $13.54 billion as of November 17, barely enough to finance two-and-a-half months of imports.
The federal government consumed a significant amount of foreign currency reserves to manage the rupee-dollar exchange rate parity while turning down proposals to let the currency devalue to its ‘real value’ of around Rs118 to a dollar. The current parity is Rs105.4 per dollar.
The biggest criticism against the incumbent government, however, is the massive increase in external debt and liabilities, which have increased to $83 billion as of June 2017. In June 2013, a few weeks after the PML-N government came into power, external debt and liabilities stood at $61 billion.
The government is also accused of twice amending the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act of 2005 in an effort to understate the growing debt burden. Against the total debt of Rs15.56 trillion in June 2013, the country’s total debt has now increased to Rs24 trillion, which is equal to 75.3 per cent of the GDP and far above the ‘safe’ threshold.
Since the government has not been able to enhance exports and attract significant foreign direct investment, the external sector has remained under pressure. In June 2013, the current account deficit – the gap between external receivables and payments – was $2.5 billion or 1.1 per cent of the GDP. The government closed the fiscal year 2016-17 at a record deficit of $12.1 billion, equal to 4 per cent of the GDP.
PML-N’s performance in two years – a blend of effort and luck
That record is likely to be short lived, as the government has already booked a $5-billion current account deficit during the July-October period.
Exports, which stood at $24.5 billion in June 2013, have decreased to $20.42 billion as of June 2017, according to the SBP annual report.
Poor fiscal performance
In June 2013, the country had booked Rs1.834 trillion as its budget deficit, equal to 8.2 per cent of GDP. This figure was inclusive of the Rs480-billion circular debt payment the PML-N government cleared after coming into power, but booked in the last year of the PPP tenure.
However, at the end of the fiscal year 2016-17, the budget deficit widened to a record Rs1.864 trillion, excluding Rs800 billion as circular debt. In terms of GDP, the 2016-17 budget deficit was equal to 5.8 per cent of GDP, which was far higher than the 4.1per cent limit approved by parliament. After including the impact of unsettled circular debt, the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP would increase to the same level in the last fiscal year that the county witnessed in 2013.
The extremely poor position of the fiscal and external fronts belies the official claims of turning around the economy. Instead, the worsening situation forced the chief of army staff to give a wakeup call to the government. The army chief warned the authorities about the “sky-high debt” and “abysmally low tax base”.
In June 2013, the FBR’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 8.7 per cent, which increased to 10.5 per cent in 2016-17, but remained far below the government’s target of 15 per cent. In absolute terms, the FBR’s tax collection increased from Rs1.946 trillion to Rs3.361 trillion due to the imposition of roughly Rs1.4 trillion in new taxes.
The government also failed to meet its promise of rationalising sales tax by ensuring standard rates for all items.
Nawaz tells party MPs to improve performance
In fact, a recent World Bank report suggests that Pakistan is losing Rs3.2 trillion in revenue every year due to weak tax compliance and enforcement.
Core macroeconomic indicators remain disappointing
The government failed to show notable progress on the two most critical macroeconomic areas – investment and national savings. The investment-to-GDP ratio inched up from 15 per cent in June 2013 to 15.8 per cent four years later. It was well below the government’s targets, and Dar would conveniently fail to bring it up.
The PML-N always boasts of promoting private investment in the country — a claim far from reality. In June 2013, private sector investment was 9.8 per cent of GDP. At the end of June 2017, it stood at 9.9 per cent, according to the SBP report.
The same is the case with national savings. In June 2013, Gross National Savings as a percentage of GDP was 13.9 per cent, which actually decreased to 13.1 per cent in June 2017.
PSEs’ performance
Another poorly managed area was the functioning of Public Sector Enterprises. The PML-N government claimed that it would privatise all loss-making enterprises and reduce their losses. The numbers tell a different story.
PML-N to grill ministers over performance
In June 2013, the PSEs’ debt and liabilities were Rs495 billion. By June 2017, they had rocketed up to Rs1.107 trillion, according to the SBP annual report. There was a net 123 per cent increase in PSEs’ losses in just four years. This was primarily because the government did not settle the circular debt and parked huge sums outside the budget.
In the energy sector, the government was unable to reform Nepra. Likewise, reforms could not be introduced in power distribution and generation companies. These entities kept causing heavy losses, which the government tried to cover by charging various surcharges from consumers.
The PML-N also failed to meet its election promise of permanently eliminating circular debt, which has piled up to Rs400 billion. By including the stock of debt that is parked in a holding company, the total circular debt would jump to Rs800 billion.
The government somehow managed to build the confidence of the private sector, but it was still not up to the mark. The two components where it performed well were infrastructure building and creating job opportunities.
There was no development on the goals of converting at least 50 per cent of remittances from overseas Pakistanis into investments and reforming tariffs to eliminate anti-export bias. The PML-N could not establish an equity fund to facilitate investment from the private and public sectors. It also could not fulfil its promise to tax all income, including agriculture income, and failed to reduce the number of federal and provincial taxes, according to PRIME.
Had PMLN pursued cheap coal in 2013 in gaddani and modern refinwey as per its manefesto rather than running to get LNG working in 2016 (when it realized it wasted 3 years) and did reforms like privitzation of distribution and new cables(was suppose to be funded by Asian bank but rejected by PMLN ) power would have been cheap, exports would have recovered and imports would have been less (furnace oil vs coal) instead ...
Had PMLN did reforms in FBR and massed uo with dollar ...
These three things power, FBR and manipulation of state bank led to down fall of Pakistan
Behind those three failures is corruption and commission ...PIA was handed over to mushidullah and power to khaqan abassi while rupee was fucked by dar
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Path-Finder
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It was sabotage of the state. There is a reason why there merasi team posts economy articles and media cell tweets because they know the fate they left things in.
ziaulislam
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They thought commissions dont effect economy ..they were wrong
First 6 months however were good ..it was when they left IMF In 2016 and fact that they didnt do anything in power sector that things start looking bad..
Now they are sobtagging munda dam..4 billion units mean 69b/ year loss and they want re bidding ..ridiculous
Path-Finder
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dar is not an economist! he is a money launderer and part and parcel of the crooked tubbar. His only contribution is to take IMF loans and full stop. Then later saying IMF plans don't work!
Lucky Breeze
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This might help to uplift the economy
Path-Finder
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I guess brain development is an issue.This might help to uplift the economy
Proudpakistaniguy
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Lucky Breeze
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Obviously. Half develop brain and lack of guidance gives birth to a confused generation. Who is blindly following a demagogue.
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