This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed “Pakistani finance ministers” carried by the newspaper the other day. The writer, Anjum Ibrahim, has pointed out, among other things, that “Pakistan has had 14 finance ministers since 2008 including one caretaker finance minister – six during the Zardari-led government, two during PML-N tenure and four during the Khan administration.

Not counting the plug-ins or those appointed to ensure that the day to day business continued smoothly as the identified candidate’s date of availability was not immediate, five men stand out with two doing a stint twice.”

That the country has had as many as 22 IMF programmes since it became a member of the ‘lender of last resort’ in 1950 is a fact. That Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation is also a fact. The decades of misgovernment have almost bankrupted the country.

My question is: who is responsible for our failings and misgovernance? Nothing can remove guilt or responsibility for harming country’s economy that the successive governments have done. Can the present PML-N-led coalition government fix the economy? I wish finance minister Miftah Ismail success.

Bisharat Cheema (Lahore)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022