Daily Times

Make it so technical and complex that even those few who know cannot know. That is the essence of creating non-transparent transparency. Mega projects are being signed with many countries involving mega money and questions are being raised on price, process and management. The answers are so technically opaque that neither parliament nor the public are able to either accept them or reject them. More confusion ensues, the media finds it too chaotic to continue with these discussions and shifts its focus to the next breaking news. The curious cases of the LNG deal with Qatar, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) routes, the orange train line with China and the metro bus with Turkey are examples of how, despite all the controversies, nothing concrete has come out of them in terms of knowing where all the money has come from and where it is going.

Gas shortage has plagued the country as badly in winter as load shedding does in the summers. Pakistan definitely needs solutions for this as the public and industry have suffered badly. Taxes like gas infrastructure development cess have been imposed on industry with crippling effect on its competitiveness. In these circumstances, the LNG deal with Qatar may be a solution to better the supply of gas at lower prices. The problem, however, is that ‘may be’ is just as good as giving the benefit of the doubt to Donald Trump for coming up with a sensible punch line. There is hue and cry by the opposition that all these deals are bypassing parliament and even when they are brought into debate the response of the relevant ministries is not satisfactory. The opposition on the other hand does not have concrete evidence to really make a solid case of it, which can penetrate through a judicial system that is extremely reluctant to take tough decisions in these contentious matters.

The perception of corruption in projects is easily understood when the deal is accompanied by obvious payoffs to the beneficiaries. Cotecna and SGS cases during the PPP regime became famous when a clear percentage six to 10 percent were supposed to be deposited in Swiss accounts belonging to Asif Zardari. However, as there are many ways to skin the cat there are many ways to skin bribes and payoffs. Bending and overlooking Pubic Procurement and Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules of procurement is one of the main ways of awarding contracts to people you want to award contracts to. In the Nandipur project case, competitive bidding was not done and the project was awarded to a company that had been blacklisted due to its earlier failures. The other big source of corruption is the awarding of equipment and services’ contracts. As these services are technical in nature, tenders are deliberately made with specifications only the favourites can comply with, delivery dates are tailored to suit only certain suppliers and bid prices are shared with those whom they want to qualify as the lowest bidders. This is systemic and technical corruption that is very difficult to understand, catch and prove. In all audits conducted at Nandipur it was proven that the wrong plant size was ordered, the wrong fuel was used and the wrong man was appointed as the head of this project. However, all this is put under the heading of incompetence and is forgiven and forgotten.

The mega LNG deal has so many layers of operation that it will be very difficult to wade through this maze of buying, transporting and distributing gas to identify multiple avenues of payoffs. However, even in this present status, experts have rejected the government’s claims. First of all, the minister for petroleum and natural resources has claimed that at six dollars MMBTU (one million British thermal units) it is the cheapest in the world. It is not. Gas prices, as is the case in oil, have tumbled in the last few years. Russsia is selling it in Eurorpe for $ 3.3 and in the US it is sold at two dollars. At this price electricity will cost six ripees per unit. But the biggest hide-and-not-tell that the minister is doing is revealing that it is a pay-as-you-take 15-year bound agreement. This means that when the oil price will be $ 100 per barrel, which it will be in a few years, we will be bound to buy at $ 15 per MMBTU and the cost of an electricity unit will be as high as Rs 22. Why we did not buy it from Iran at three dollars is also an enigma. Also, how do you prove that Saifur Rehman was there in Qatar as a friend of Nawaz Sharif and was not the deal broker just as Mr Jindal of India is around the prime minister whenever there is a meeting between the Indian and Pakistani counterparts? However, the inexplicable appearances of these close friends during such important governmental business have always been exposed in the media, questioned by experts but concrete traceable evidence has never come forward. Even when documents are presented to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or the court they mysteriously disappear from record and the likes of Mr Asif Ali Zardari are honourably exempted of all charges.

Not revealing may help in letting people grope about in the dark but creates other problems that are reflected in the shape of more protests, more conflicts, more mismanagement and more blood on hands. PIA privatisation and the recent flare up between the PPP and PML-N in Azad Kashmir are frightening manifestations of this frustration ready to explode. The CPEC has not even started and bitterness has reached high levels. While the prime minister has said the original route is intact the Chinese ambassador in his meeting with the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said that he was not aware of the existence of a western route. Let us hope this is just ignorance on his part rather than actual reality.

The best way to create controversy is to be non-inclusive and evasive. That is how the government and its ministries have become. The fact that in the recent assembly session only 20 members were present and that also mainly from the opposition shows how the business of parliament has become irrelevant and unimportant. Leadership by force and pushover may seem heady and effective for the government but can never be efficient in the long run. If the prime minister has to threaten provinces and institutions to tow his line, the spectacle of rebellion and retaliation will seriously stall its own working. Why then does the government keep on shrouding many public projects in mystery? Perhaps because the price of sharing and knowing will lead to an inconvenient transparency that those who have a lot to hide can ill afford.

The writer is a columnist and analyst, and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com