Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the Special Investment Facilitation Council that the country needed another IMF package, spread over the next three years, if it was to survive. He sounded this gloomy note at the first meeting of the SIFC apex committee of this tenure. The forum would not be new to him, for the SIFC was founded during his first tenure as PM at the head of the coalition that replaced the PTI. Though this is not the first time he sounded this particular message, it was the first time he made it to an audience that included two PPP CMs, a PTI CM and the Chief of Army Staff. Perhaps the most telling point he made was that this programme would require deep-rooted and across-the-board structural reforms, and that these would have to be made. The SIFC apex committee is the forum at which the COAS is best able to provide his input to the government on economic matters. During the first Shehbaz government, and the interim government, it seemed to attract considerable investment from the Middle East, and it would naturally have an interest in the larger economic environment, because that is an important determinant of how attractive the country is for foreign investors.
The importance of a message delivered to all major parties should indicate the seriousness of the federal government, and its commitment to the reform process, which will not take place merely so that the IMF can tick off some boxes on a form, but because they quill enable the country to attract foreign investment not because it is something the country needs, but because it is good business for the foreigner making the investment. At the same time, it is perhaps welcome that the PML(N) especially, as well as others, are making the right noises about realising that the need is upon us to do things differently.
No longer is it possible for elite capture to continue. The ‘good old days’ are gone. It is no longer about which party gets to exploit state resources so that leaders can maintain a lavish lifestyle. It is now about seeing that people’s problems, particularly the economic, are solved. The real question remains one of earning enough to pay off all those loans taken on in the knowledge that they would fall due later. Well, that later is now. It might seem unfair to those burdened with their predecessors’ debts, but this is the generation that must pay.
