Daily Times

This is what International Monetary Fund (IMF) Resident Representative to Pakistan Teresa Daban Sanchez has delivered to Pakistan along a set of damning conditions attached to the bailout package. Of all conditions, the condition of establishing a stable political environment in the country is the most pressing, and a doable thing by all the stakeholders. At a symposium in Islamabad, she narrated a list of potential risks harming Pakistan’s economy and of them political risk was at the top. Without mentioning much, she said certain IMF terms in the bailout programme need legislation and that can only be achieved if all parties in the National Assembly have consensus on them. The government has no choice but to accept IMF terms, and given its numerical strength in the National Assembly, it will have to reach out to other parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party. The recent actions by the government, however, speak otherwise, leaving a little room for the reconciliatory moves. “The government right now has no majority (for legislation). We need to create consensus, we need to convince, and we need to create some kind of support,” she said at the symposium.

The government must explain to the nation that what actions require change in legislation to achieve the programme objectives. The government has committed to making amendments to the State Bank Act, NEPRA Act, Anti-Money Laundering Act and the State-Owned Enterprise Act as part of the IMF programme. Side by side, it should shun its policy of sidelining the entire opposition in the name of accountability. The spat of arrests on whimsical grounds going on for months has made the accountability a butt of joke. In many cases, arrests could have been avoided without any disruption to investigation of the cases. The threats of more arrests, unnecessarily hurled by the cabinet members, leave the entire accountability process just a system of political victimisation.

Ms Sanchez also spoke on the implications of failure to get out of the FATF ‘grey list’. Though the list has nothing to do with the IMF or World Bank disbursements, FATF blacklisting, however, can hinder private capital inflows. The government has been facing a stiff resistance from the anti-documentation traders after the passage of the budget. The IMF representative is aware of the wave of resentment and resistance but she urged the government to show resolve to stay the course. On this front, ours full support is with the government. *