Comfortably past its mid-term now, the PML-N looks comfortably numb on reforms. Through its latest manifesto tracker report for the Jul-Dec 2015 period released yesterday, the Islamabad-based think-tank Prime has put a number on that fairly obvious observation. The government barely passed, as it reached a 54.5 percent achievement level, a marginal improvement over last report, on its electoral pledges.

Prime is now in its third year tracking the federal governments performance relative to the latters 2013 manifesto promises. Its tracking methodology could knock some rough edges off, but the initiative is promising. The 92 targets plucked from the manifesto are clubbed under three categories: economic revival, energy security and social protection. Each target is scored from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest), based on progress made since last report in policy/legislation, institutional reforms, and implementation.

The latest report has a similar riff as last many reports. The road to reforms is a long one, but the government, by not expediting the reforms process, is effectively kicking the can further down the road. As it approaches last quarter of its term, reforms can be politically costly, thereby further retarding the process. Lets have a look at the three areas to see where the government has been found lacking again.

Saving grace has again been government spending on "social protection". Thanks to the continuing and rising spending on the program of BISP - which had Rs102 billion budgetary allocations in FY16 - the government received an average score of 7.13 in this category in Jul-Dec. review. Continuation of BISP, which was PPPs child, was an act of political maturity, and it is a social safety net of much import.

Critical social-safety spending helped improve the governments overall score in Primes barometer, but if we strictly talk of economic matters, that is, areas concerning economic revival and energy security, the governments score averages 4.61 in Jul-Dec 2015, the highest yet, but still below the passing grade of 5.0

"Economic revival" averaged 4.21 for the 57 targets under its hood, which is a slight improvement over previous reports reading. Among the notable improvements were in the process of privatization, capital market measures concerning SECP and PSX, and an expected improvement in tax administration at center and provinces. Negative developments occurred as the government failed to cut bureaucracys size, limit borrowing, reduce tax rates, decrease VIP culture, or improve the regulatory environment.

In "energy security", we see some visible improvement over previous report, as the average score for the 32 targets included in this category edged past 5.0. Positivity resulted from movement in corporatization and privatization drive for discos and gencos. However, no more progress was seen on critical issues like rationalization of energy tariffs and the decentralisation of wholesale electricity market.

The report exhorts the government to undertake the pending reforms in areas of taxation, regulations, and privatisation, as just 7-8 percent of the 92 targets stood achieved halfway through the governments term. Indeed, there is positive progress on 31 percent of the targets. The authors acknowledge it, but also lament that the "trend of a steady progress" is done in a lack of "resolve" for "fundamental reforms.

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"Clearly, the government has a lot of work cut out for it. There are still a couple of years to go before the electoral cycle sets in. Will the PML-N government be more interested in laying down the chips for winning next election? Or will it buck the populist trend and administer the needful reforms? Prime is not optimistic. But economists are not known for their optimism. So, the PML-N should show resolve and make use of currently favourable economic indicators to push through tough choices that need to be made.

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