Daily Times

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not the first to identify “incompetence of the bureaucracy” as a major hurdle to investment in Pakistan. Successive governments have vowed to sort out this problem with Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) making the most noise about it when in power. It even instituted a commission, headed by former state bank governor Ishrat Husain, for civil service reforms. Yet even though the press initially carried reports that it was on the verge of presenting a comprehensive roadmap for the way forward, and even gave a report to the government, no reforms ever saw the light of day.

It’s something of a shame that the government’s own machinery is a major obstacle in the way of the country’s progress and nobody has yet been able to do anything about it. Perhaps a big part of the problem is that efforts to reform the bureaucracy rely on input from the institution itself. And it’s no surprise, at the end of the day, that even the senior-most officers from the service prefer to sabotage any chances of change so they and their colleagues can sit comfortably in their positions of power.

The Fund also touched upon how the service has become increasingly corrupt over time. Things have come to the point that on top of multiple, needless layers of official procedure for getting anything started, especially businesses, greasing palms for necessary approvals and certificates has become almost an official requirement as well. Such things are bad enough in isolation, but when you have to move in tandem with far more efficient partners, as in the case of CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor), then it is only a matter of time before they come up in official exchanges; as has been happening over the last couple of years.

IMF’s latest report only adds to the pressure on the civil service to change its ways. If the government is still not up to this task, then it has only itself to blame if nothing improves despite all the sacrifices made to get the bailout program and other such loans. *