Expert identifies corruption as an impediment to Pakistan’s development

ISLAMABAD: “Developing and low-income countries such as Pakistan are struggling to develop due to different types of corruption.”

This was stated by Dr Yuen YuenAng of the Johns Hopkins University while speaking at a webinar on “The Clash of Two Gilded Ages” organised by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE).

She stated, “If you look at developing countries such as Pakistan, the core feature of the corruption is that these countries tend to have all four types of corruption.”

She added that in particular, the dominant type of corruption tends to be corruption with theft which is purely predatory.

Dr Ang said that businesses are daily being harassed by bureaucratic red tape.

At the same time, you also have these corrupt deals which you can class under excess money so you look at this corruption structure, it is bad for business.

She said that it is hard to be an entrepreneur and difficult to design and execute infrastructure projects and consequently hard to deliver public services.

Dr Ang elaborating on the difference between the Chinese and the American gilded ages, said that the difference is not that these countries do not have corruption, but the difference is that these countries are dominant only in the category of excess money but they have eliminated or they take a resolute effort to eliminate corruption.

She said that both China and the US are living through the gilded ages today but while they share similar problems they employ very different solutions because of different political systems and different political goals.

She said that President Biden’s campaign is called build back better. She said he needs to convince the US policymakers and the public to pass laws to raise taxes on the rich and build large infrastructure projects.

There is limited room for him to give commands to solve the problems of capitalism. In China, President Xi Jinping’s campaign is called common prosperity and under this banner, he has carried out a campaign against corruption and for poverty eradication.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024