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| India-Pakistan |
| Time for a new finance minister |
| 2017-09-23 |
| [DAWN] With Finance Minister Ishaq Dar facing legal challenges along with the Sharifs, it is becoming increasingly clear that he will have to tackle some difficult questions in the days to come. Even though he has not spoken publicly in recent days, it is fair to surmise that the action taken by the National Accountability Bureau is seen by him as a politically motivated witch-hunt. That is, after all, how Maryam Nawaz has described the ongoing proceedings, and there is little reason to believe that Mr Dar disagrees with this view. Whatever may be one’s take on the political developments, one thing has now become certain: Mr Dar needs to step down as finance minister. This is not only because he is now hobbled by legal entanglements. Even more importantly, it is high time Pakistain had a finance minister who is willing and able to acknowledge that the economy is in a downward spiral and that if urgent corrective action is not undertaken, the country will find itself in a crisis very soon. Mr Dar has prided himself on his track record of restoring growth and the level of the foreign exchange reserves. To some extent, he is correct. But the positive aspects are limited, and Pakistain now needs a finance minister who is more forward-looking, rather than constantly harking back to a rapidly receding moment of respite. Whatever turnaround in the fortunes of the economy that we have seen in the past four years is now falling apart, rapidly, as the current account deficit continues to climb, reserves decline, and the growth momentum is increasingly revealed to be highly patchy and thinly layered. |
| Posted by:Fred |