[🇵🇰] Pakistan ‘is bankrupt’ and ‘sinking deeper every year’: Atif Mian

[dalit]

Doesn’t take an economist to realize that our debt has been rising at 10-12% per year since 1970 and that compounding over time has led the debt to go from $3BN To $130BN. Import controls went away some time in the 90s so we have been addicted to imports and paying for them from borrowings for an entire generation. I don’t have all the year’s data but certainly in the last decade our imports are double of our exports.

No leader (military or civilian) has been able to flatten this trajectory: if this economist is to be believed, we should be sinking no more than 1994, or if I were to be generous, life is going to be no worse than it has been in the past. Its been a bad trajectory with no leader having the courage to correct it. All they do is wait for the next aid package (from the US or IMF).

What could have been controlled was to have better governance/law order so companies that were running didn’t feel they should move to Bangladesh to be competitive.

Local Pakistani businesses are mostly running off to UAE.

Let's face it, who would want to invest in a place where the generals are calling the shots and we don't know how tomorrow looks like.

 

[Old School]

There will be a color revolution in Pakistan soon. The puppet masters have become loose cannons for even their overlords.

 

[dalit]

There will be a color revolution in Pakistan soon. The puppet masters have become loose cannons for even their overlords.

It is very telling.

 

[Lulldapull]

Why not then using the same logic by using the Irani experience and open the Indian border to flood the market with all other goods? Indian Punjab is alone sufficient for agricultural goods, for instance. But that would be too much of an ego problem.

60% of our meager budget gets used up for Crude/ LNG/ Diesel/ Motor oil/ Greases and importing polymer beads for making plastic bags/ goods in house/ local industry. Engro uses gas as feedstock for making ammonia/ fertilizer. Khuda ka shukar hae at least we buying discount hydrocarbons now. Doing business with Indians is a political decision. It's the same with these Irani turani.....but at least we smuggling bhai, vurna we can't even survive. We don't got dollars to pay the Qatari and UAE/ Sawdi anymore. Smuggling/ barter zindabad!

 

[Lulldapull]

Bhai I read news few months back that we now buying about $3 billion in fuel/ gas from Iran and our enterprising jharrnail turn it around and sell it to our ghareeb awaam for $10 billion. Taqreeban Rs 38 ka liter at source in Iran and at the petrol pump in Karachi sells for Rs 300......... Subhaanallah ......