Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), a coalition of 11 parties, marked the first anniversary of their successful overthrow of Imran Khan’s government. However, discussions about the PDM’s financial state are often politically charged and focus on specific indicators. When asked about inflation in the country, the general response is that it has been on the rise, but opinions on the government’s handling of the situation are mixed.
The prime minister of Pakistan Mian Muhammad Shabaz Sharif accepted that the past one year was a time of massive challenges and difficulties. The coalition government has been at pains to repair, rebuild and deepen Pakistan’s diplomatic relations that were dealt a severe blow by the previous regime.
The government has made efforts to diversify the energy mix with an aim to provide relief to the citizens. The renewed focus on solar, hydel, and coal power projects are aimed at replacing the costlier sources of power generation with cheaper ones.
The Inflation has hit people hard due to geo-strategic rivalries, increase in prices of fuel and food commodities and historic floods are some of the key factors responsible for inflation.
The government tried their best to unite the voters by offering a free flour scheme but the chaos around the distribution of flour which also claimed several lives back footed the scheme for the poor. The subsidized oil scheme for bikers and small engine cars proposed by the federal government never made any progress.
The public’s assessment of the PDM’s one-year performance is diverse, with some expressing concern that Pakistan is on the verge of default, while others believe that the coalition deserves more time to show improvement.
Recently, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party released a set of “white papers” titled “One-year dark period,” evaluating the PDM-led government’s performance. The papers focus on deteriorating peace and order conditions, human rights violations, political exploitation of institutions, confrontation with the court, and economic failures. The 51-page report highlights the devaluation of the rupee against the dollar, a decline in GDP growth from 6% to 0.4%, and a significant increase in inflation from 13.37% to 35.4%. The report also notes a decrease in interest rates, remittance, exports, Moody’s rating, and foreign direct investment.
The first anniversary of the PDM’s victory over the PTI government has prompted discussions about the coalition’s economic policies and performance.
The government has survived Imran’s onslaught and is so far, able to prevent the country defaulting on its debt payments, the experts believe, completing one year amid political, economic, and judicial impasse is nothing short of an “achievement” in itself.
If we go chronologically, Pakistan was in serious financial crisis when the PML-N-led coalition government took over as the 7th and 8th review of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme was stalled, while a huge current account deficit was piling up coupled with a large fiscal deficit.