Writing at the height of Pakistan’s 2022–23 economic crisis — with foreign reserves near exhaustion, the rupee in freefall, and sovereign default fears dominating headlines — Dr. Mohey-ud-din argues that the urgent scramble for IMF disbursements and bilateral bailouts is crowding out a longer-term economic agenda that Pakistan cannot afford to ignore.
The piece contends that Pakistan’s policymakers have repeatedly fallen into a pattern of firefighting short-run crises while deferring the structural reforms that could break the cycle: broadening the chronically narrow tax base, shifting from a consumption-driven to an export-driven growth model, investing in industrial productivity and human capital, and building institutional credibility with investors and development partners. Each bout of stabilisation, the author argues, treats the symptoms while the underlying weaknesses deepen.
Dr. Mohey-ud-din calls for a coherent reform agenda — not crisis management masquerading as policy — that addresses Pakistan’s fiscal fragmentation, low export sophistication, and chronic under-investment in productive capacity. The column cautions that without deliberate structural change, the next crisis is not a risk to be managed but an inevitability to be scheduled.
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This opinion piece was originally published in The Friday Times on 20 January 2023.