Pakistan Economic Challenges And Solutions | Ishrat Husain

Pakistan faces a multitude of economic challenges some of them man made and domestic and the other external and natural. There is very little disagreement on the diagnostics — weak institutions, low productivity. Low savings and investment, burgeoning burden of debt, Macroeconomic instability, poor human capital, indifferent bureaucracy, tough business climate, inefficiencies in energy sector etc. This volume consisting of fourteen chapters attempts to bring together at one place the well-known prescriptions and detailed solutions to address these challenges.

The main insight arising from this work is that a lot has been done to define the contents and the contours of reforms but the asymmetry in the accrual of losses and gains is the main stumbling block to their implementation. As losses are immediate, the losers are identifiable, organized groups that agitate and resist the reforms eroding the political capital of the ruling party weakening their chances at electoral cycle. Successive governments have therefore found hardly any champions among the elected representatives. Given that the gains would occur sometime in distant future and would be diffused throughout the economy the credit for success would be preempted by the party in opposition in power at that time strengthening its chances of getting reelected. This disconnect between the timing of political and economic gains and losses thus leads to the maintenance of status quo.