While there’s no doubt that Pakistan has so far handled all waves of the pandemic better than almost all other countries in the whole world, the biggest advantage of which has been that our economy was kept running when most others were forced to shut down, it is also very important not to let our successes make us complacent. These gains are welcome but they are still very fragile, and neither the country nor the economy is truly out of the woods just yet. So prudence would dictate that we continue to keep our heads down and do the right thing, which should then manifest itself in a smoothly running economy, despite all the headwinds, and export orders for our industry that others cannot honour because of the pandemic. It’s a good thing, therefore, that the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) World Economic Outlook, which was released on Tuesday, mentioned Pakistan, along with Morocco and a couple of others, for its “robust economic activity.” Still, it did so only in passing. And welcome as the news is, for the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) loyalists to take it and light up Twitter with it, entirely misses the point. The fact is that even though we have done much better than others for the last year or so, let’s not forget that for the most part we have really only done a better job of riding out the storm than anything else. That helps the economy, of course, but it doesn’t exactly set us on the path to high growth, which is what we desperately need if we are to stand on our own two feet. That is also why the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at seven percent. There are clearly inflationary pressures building, especially in food items with very inelastic demand, yet the central bank is willing to keep real rates in negative territory because that is what is needed to stimulate industry production and ultimately exports even more. Surely the PTI government understands better than anybody else in the whole country that we will have to do something extraordinary to get the IMF to play along with our bold and expansionary budget and also keep the bailout program alive. And putting the spin on IMF’s reports to make themselves look good and the opposition look bad might work in prime time talk shows, but it will do precious little for the real economy. It would be a better idea to wait till the fruits of our economic growth really trickle down to the public, across the board as opposed to a few groups or a few sectors, before going to town on it. Hopefully PTI’s economic managers will leverage the IMF’s good feelings about our economy to make it even more resilient. *