Nawaz Sharif right after his ouster, tried to sabotage the economic progression by portraying that all the macroeconomic improvement, and even CPEC were fruits of his labour; and he warned that economy would retract after his exit.
His first claim after being dismissed was that CPEC was a personal gift to Nawaz from the Chinese PM. He was trying to imply that CPEC would vanish with him when in fact, CPEC is part of OBOR which involves 60 odd countries and Pakistan is an integral part of it. Plus, the idea of Chinese building Gwadar port was initiated at least 15 years ago and was at the verge of execution in the Musharraf era.
True, the execution took place during Nawaz tenure; and some credit goes to him. But by no means was CPEC a brainchild of his. Whatever his contribution, he is surely not indispensable to the implementation of the mega project which is evident from the fact that Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang was in Pakistan to celebrate country’s 70 years of independence. Chinese high level official presence on14th August could be signal to people of Pakistan that CPEC is very much in action even without Nawaz Sharif.
Sharif has also been claiming that the people’s mandate has been stolen by sending him packing—demonstration this so-called street power by going on a road trip to Lahore via GT road. But right after he reached Lahore, the people of Pakistan have celebrated the71st Independence Day with great joy and exuberance. The patriotism shown by common man this year was missing for the past many years; and there were no signs of mourning for Nawaz exit. Reportedly, Rs15billion were spent on Independence Day celebrations in Karachi alone while the fireworks and lightening in Lahore were heartening.
Nawaz and his Finance Minister Dar can take credit for bringing economic growth to over 5 percent while keeping the inflation below 5 percent. Yes, that combination was much needed and has brought confidence back to the economy. The lady luck was with Nawaz as from 2014 onwards, low oil prices bought the windfall to the economy which is captured by both public and private sector.
What the duo missed, however was to take advantage of low oil prices whilst PMLN heavy mandate to bring much needed structural reforms. The PMLN prior to 2013 elections was wooing for rationalizing tax rates and enhancing the tax base. However, nothing of the form happened in the past four years. The already high GST was further inched up by Dar and the decline in income tax rate was almost offset by increase in dividend tax. The recently released tax directory has shown that there is little to no improvement in the tax base. There is a high incidence of tax on existing tax payers while the introduction of WHT for non-filers is priced in by the non-tax payers.
The second most important point was of privatization and corporatization of PSEs. There is no single case of any big sized PSE privatization or any example of improved governance. The government, on the flipside, has increased the number of PSEs by having majority of power projects under government owned new entities.
There is no doubt that economic management and governance under Nawaz tenure was much better than previous PPP regime which was captured by Zardari and company. However, the legislation process was much better in the latter case while PMLN attempted to concentrate the power within the hands of few and sanctity of institutions are being compromised in the process.
Perhaps, this attitude of Nawaz led to his demise. The bottom-line is that CPEC and economic progression will continue; Nawaz or no Nawaz. All his fight could bring a glitch in an otherwise smooth journey.
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