Daily Times

If the prime minister keeps changing FBR (Federal Board of Revenue) chiefs at the same pace as he has done so far – six in three years – then we can expect at least two more new heads of the revenue collection Bureau in the remaining two years of this administration. And this calculation does not take into account the many other ministers and bureaucrats that he has shuffled by now. Surely the PM understands better than most people that it is precisely the inability of the FBR to ramp up tax collection, in addition to the commerce ministry’s failure to enhance export earnings, that is at the centre of Pakistan’s Balance of Payments (BoP) crisis. And, just as surely, the PM ought to know by now that merely changing the man at the top does not do much to help things because the Bureau, as a whole, is in need of a structural overhaul. Otherwise, something worth writing home about would have been achieved by the six men who’ve tried and failed to impress their boss till now.

There’s also a lot more to consider when taking such decisions; and the finance ministry gives good examples. Asad Umar was removed even before he could present his first budget as finance minister because he couldn’t get the Fund to dilute its up-front demands in time. He was replaced by Hafiz Sheikh, who was tasked with implementing the harsh IMF (International Monetary Fund) prescriptions which Asad Umar was ordered to have toned down before signing on the dotted line. And then Hafiz Sheikh was also shown the door rather unceremoniously and then after the strange, and even somewhat embarrassing, one- or two-day stint of Hammad Azhaar, Shaukat Tarin was roped in to completely undo what Hafiz Sheikh was working on and get the IMF to accept an exactly opposite, completely expansionary, fiscal policy from the government.

And so we go round in circles. Yet it is disappointing that even so late in the electoral cycle the ruling party is still confused about which people, or even which sort of people, to appoint at the most sensitive and important positions in government. The official line about dismissing the FBR chief this time was the data hack, and most probably data theft, that took place right under his nose and all the Bureau did about it in the immediate aftermath was make excuses to give everybody, including the government, the wrong impression. And Special Advisor to PM Dr Waqar Masood Khan was also sent packing because, according to reports, he comes from the old school and might not be able to keep pace with the new finance minister’s reform drive.

It’s time that the government put an end to all the confusion that its own indecisiveness is causing. The least that is expected of any administration, especially after three years, is for it to get its team together; because if it is still looking for the right people for the right jobs, then it might not have enough time to get the right people to deliver the right kind of results if and when they are found.

There’s also something to be said about the PM’s habit of praising a person one day and showing him the door the next. His tweets were all praise for the FBR just recently, for example, because of its “record revenue collection,” but heads were made to roll only two weeks later. The same thing happened with the Punjab police chief, who was praised for his performance one day, and sacked the next. It seems nobody is insulated from this pattern except Punjab CM Usman Buzdar. *