Some economic indicators are more important than others and there are times when you can have all sorts of indicators looking up, but if inflation is persistent, and eats up people’s savings, and debt repayment burden hangs around your neck like a noose, and eats up the government’s savings, there’s not much that is easily achievable. And since the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has just released figures that confirm that the government’s total debt jumped 21.7pc to Rs38.7 trillion, over just the last two years, it’s little surprise that the economy is not taking off like the government would like it to. Since these figures have come out just when the current account is dipping back into red, after staying above water for almost all of the last fiscal year, it is understandable why a lot of people in the finance ministry would be left scratching their heads. This is the time when the government really needs the economy to grow, otherwise it will lose initiative and its expansionary budget will not bear the kind of fruit that it is counting on it to. Pakistan’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands near 80pc, far above the threshold of 60pc, which means the government has a lot more fiscal juggling to do before it can really breathe easy. And the fact that the IMF program is also suspended must be giving some people in Islamabad sleepless nights because unless the Fund agrees with our budgetary experiment, of sorts, by the time the two sides sit together and talk it out in October, there’s a good chance that Islamabad would have to slap the kind of tariffs and taxes that it has been trying so hard to avoid for more than a year now. Either way, such large debt means that this year too, just like every fiscal year, the development budget will have to be revised downward to meet repayment obligations as and when they become due. All this means that the finance ministry as well as the central bank have their work cut out for them. They will have to do something about the mountain of debt that we have accumulated, the high prices especially of essential items with very inelastic demand and the continuous weakening of the rupee that nobody is able to make any sense of. Unless these important indicators turn green, the government will not be rid of the kind of economic problems that weigh GDP growth down despite its best intentions. Now the ruling party’s pet argument, that it inherited a deeply indebted economy because of all the faults of previous administrations, no longer holds. And PTI will have to face the same questions that it posed to its predecessors; like what was all the money borrowed for, what is there to show for it, and how is it going to be paid back? Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it is time for the ruling party to finally fill in these blanks. *