Daily Times

At the beginning of the year the government offered assurances that Pakistan was facing no threat of food insecurity. Indeed, the country was said to be enjoying stockpile surpluses, covering wheat and rice among others. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, however, paints a rather different picture. Pakistan’s food trade gap looks set to hit $2 billion for the first half of the current fiscal year. This is a significant hike from the $470 million of FY 2015. It is bad news for the country’s current account deficit on its balance of payments.

Who is to be believed? It would be imprudent to rule out either assessment entirely out of hand. In his comments about surpluses, the Food Security and Research minister didn’t touch upon the matter of access to these stockpiles or whether, indeed, they were being hoarded to drive up local prices. He also failed to explain Pakistan’s resorting to importing rice from India and China. At the same time, poor performance of national food producing industries have been recorded. Also not to be ignored is the direct impact of our, at times, fast-changing environmental challenges on the latter.

So what is to be done?

In short, Pakistan needs to invest locally. This is still an overwhelmingly agricultural-based economy, with a sizeable rural population. With much of the latter consisting of daily wage earners or indentured labour, which is slavery by another name. These are not the folk who will get to cruise along to the latest fancy plaza selling the latest imported foodstuffs at inflated prices. This is not just about offering choice to the few who can afford it. This is a big business project that returns handsome profits for those who are part of the importing and distribution networks, with no trickle-down effect. To be sure, this is not a call to see Pakistan transformed into a dystopian state of totalitarian proportions. But it is a recognition that the more we are plugged into the global capitalist system the more safeguards we need to implement. For this is not a system designed to benefit countries in the Global South. As such, the government could consider incentives for people to buy locally. There is no shame in this. But the key is to learn from the Buy British campaigns, especially those of the 1980s. These came hot on the heels of Margaret Thatcher’s structured and deliberate decimation of local manufacturing industries. Britain has never recovered from this gross misstep that gifted it a “boom-bust economy”, rendering it forever the Sick Man of Europe. Pakistan must do its best to avoid the same fate, as already the signs seem less than promising. The PBS figures indicate the surplus years of FY 2014-2015 are simply not sustainable. Add to this the absence of IMF cash injections coupled with Pakistan’s scheduled repayments to the Paris Club — and the future looks less than bright. *