Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is playing with fire by delaying the decision to uncap petrol prices because if his best plan, just days before Finance Minister Miftah Ismail sits down with the IMF for crunch talks about the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), is to try to convince the donors to find another way, then the economy is most likely headed for a shock that the current account is in no position to handle. One can only hope that Miftah worked it out with the Fund in his earlier meeting that they would drop this bomb after the next round of talks, which begin in Doha on the 18th. That gives Shahbaz another fortnight to play benevolent leader as people brace for the shock. But if there’s no such arrangement, and Miftah will try to do with Shaukat Tarin tried to do with no success, then we might as well put the writing on the wall ourselves. This debate has already lingered far too long. If the subsides stay, the Fund will go. And if that happens, all other donors will also pull away, including, as we just found out, our dearest friends in the Gulf and perhaps even China. All that for a subsidy that will blow a hole in reserves very quickly and turn around to put even greater tax pressures on the people at a time when the government would not even be able to go begging for loans? It’s just one more of those times when people will simply have to accept the fact that they are doomed either way. And if the government does not put this burden on them right now, then it will put a far greater burden on them not far down the road. Soon, Shahbaz will no longer be able to say no to petrol prices that need to rise. And the sooner he makes that clear to the Fund, if has not done it already, the better for him, the economy, and in a strange, cruel way, also for the people. *