Daily Times

Smart accounting. Numbers are just numbers. Statistics are just averages. Facts are a dual-edged sword. These are the contentious statements that we use to justify official figures and our defence of the same by interpreting them in a certain manner. In this world of knowledge-based era we are drowning in information of all types, and many times it becomes difficult to decipher true from false. Everyday we read about how the country is developing or not developing; how the quality of living has improved or not improved; how the past was better than the future. The present government has been under constant criticism regarding the data they release. Figures for growth have been disputed by the IMF and many financial experts, but the government has neither been able to prove them wrong or establish its own statistical credentials.

The latest of this controversy is the ‘smart’ parking of big expenditures elsewhere to lighten the deficit in budget and hide the worsening economic situation. The IMF has reprimanded the government on such blatant statistical errors. This ‘error’ is huge as it amounts to Rs 212 billion, and makes the cumulative undisclosed amount of the last two years Rs 605 billion, highest ever by any government. This is six billion dollars, the amount that is more than our IMF loans, more than our health budget, more than our education budget, and more than our budget for clean water, NACTA, energy, environment and RND combined. All eminent economists like Dr Hafeez Pasha, Dr Ashfaque Hassan and Dr Ikram-ul-Haq have been challenging that these are serious errors and are illegal, as they violate many accounting and financial standards. President of Brazil Dilma Rouseff has recently been impeached and removed from her position for exactly the same violation of hiding the deficit figures. But perhaps thanks to the amazing resilience of our finance minister this is just a ‘slip of the pen’.

In Pakistan we have seen progress and prosperity being defined and described in a variety of ways. There is a unified agreement that the country has fallen behind instead of moving ahead. The economic variables spell it out but then the theory of relativity applies, and many things start looking not what the numbers tell you. A typical example of this is the recent press conference held by the State Bank governor who went to great pains to explain that the figures and numbers are being misinterpreted by media, and that Pakistan has made much more progress than what analysts on TV are portraying. When he was asked that the government had been boasting about reserves being the highest now whereas remittances had started to slide, he smiled and said it was only because there were too many holidays in the month of July.

There are certain universally acceptable economic indicators and human development indicators that establish the base for these claims like GDP, or more innovative like the Gross Domestic Happiness. To see the progress in a country multiple indices are established to gauge development. When a country is developed it starts to figure higher in many international spheres. One look at the Olympic medal table recently concluded in Brazil will support this argument. The top three countries on the gold hunt were the USA, the UK and China. Thus, sports, culture and innovation are all indicators of the state of a country’s all-round health. Pakistan has not only lagged behind economically but also in sports, arts and innovation. The fact that only seven sportsmen represented Pakistan in the Olympics, and that too as wild card entries, is a reflection of how the overall climate of progress in all walks of life has dwindled.

While figures can be fudged, twisted and locally packaged, international statistics are harder to shape according to the ‘Dar economics model’. According to the recently released UN Global Education Monitoring Report 2016, Pakistan is half a century behind in its primary education targets, and 60 years behind in its secondary education targets. The latest Human Capital Report also shows that in 2016, Pakistan is ranked 118 of 130 countries, below Bangladesh and other South Asian neighbours. In two years we have slipped six places. This continuous neglect in these categories in the long run becomes the single biggest barrier in making a country strong and vibrant. However, an educated and informed populace would then not be taken in by accounting gimmicks, and would demand accountability from its leaders. The minute the news was out that the Brazilian president had hidden the real deficit figures the opposition and the people of Brazil started a protest to force an impeachment. In Pakistan rarely does a day go by when the editorial of one or the other eminent newspaper does not point out the figure-fudging of the government, but sadly, people are not aware of the impact of these discrepancies.

Therefore, the trumpeting of reserves going up and stock market booming makes enough noise in media to give the ordinary man the perception that this is all there is to economic development. The variables of real economic development through which countries like China have become emerging superpowers are trade, foreign direct investment and industrial development. While our reserves comprise of aid and loans it is never aid but trade that indicates the economic health of a country. Pakistan’s trade deficit is on the rise as exports are in dire straits. Pakistan’s exports dropped to an eight-year low of $20.8 billion in the fiscal year 2015-16 as per the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Pakistan’s foreign direct investment dipped 13 percent, and even large-scale manufacturing has started to slide. That is why there is mass unemployment leading to huge socioeconomic repercussions in the form of a growing rate of suicide and crime.

Misrepresenting figures and hiding the expenditure of billions of rupees is also intellectual corruption, where abusing the ignorance of the masses and connivance of the regulatory bodies result in a process of constant immunity from consequences. It is time for citizen rights organisations, political parties and civil society to create awareness of this negligence as a violation of right to know the truth and nothing but the truth.

The writer is a columnist and an analyst. She can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com