Cost Cutting
A long with the many ideas being floated for enhancing revenue generation, it is important to find innovative ways for cutting non-development costs and curtailing expenditures. There is a fair amount of recurring wastage and only strict control at every tier of administration can keep this to a very minimum. Add to this the losses due to inefficiency and corruption and we can get quite substantial savings by installing checks and balances at various nodal points to ensure effective monitoring of financial outlays in the system.
There is a dire need to reduce the number of departments in the civilian bureaucracy as well as personnel. There may be a hue and cry about unemployment but it will be far more economical to have people stay at home and collect their salaries than load the government with additional financial burden because of individuals making private telephone calls, excessive use of electricity, misuse of government transport and personnel, etc. Most of these departments have overlapping responsibilities and are breeding grounds for corruption. They burden the already overloaded taxpayers with additional “demands”, both official and unofficial, so much so that tax-payers are in danger of being declared an “endangered species”. To effect meaningful reduction, it will be necessary to do a systematic processing of needs that are vital for the running of the nation matched against the means to accomplish these needs.
Mixed Signals on the Economy
For sheer optimism, turn to Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. And why not? When he took over as the nation’s account manager, the foreign exchange kitty was bare and IMF was on a fang baring relationship with Pakistan, mainly because of the nuclear blast but also because of the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) issue and the fact that Islamabad was failing on collecting revenues as well as controlling expenditures. More important there was foot dragging on the institutional reforms IMF desired. Reading correctly the vibes emanating from the White House (courtesy of old IMF and Washington hand State Bank Governor Mohammad Yaqub), troubleshooter Ishaq Dar counselled the PM to hang tough and sack the negotiating team consisting of Advisor Finance (Hafiz Pasha?) and Secretary Finance Moeen Afzal. He then took over the Ministry of Finance in addition to his own duties and lo and behold, the White House’s arm-twisting of the IMF resulted in the long-delayed package for Pakistan being agreed to and the first tranche released. Once the logjam broke, money flooded in and the result saw a strengthening of the Pakistani Rupee on the open market. Nothing succeeds like success and Ishaq Dar has been on a roll since negotiating the minefields with aplomb and confidence, sometimes getting carried away in his use of gender to describe achievement. To his credit he not only explained but also apologised quickly to put the incident behind him, even though his detractors are trying best to keep it alive in order to embarrass him.