A nation of 250 million cannot survive on sub-4 percent growth, especially when unemployment has surged to a 21-year high of 7.1 percent and poverty, as the World Bank notes, has climbed to a staggering 44.7 percent. Pakistan’s state economic managers have finally said out loud what economists, businesses and ordinary citizens have long known: “the country’s growth model is broken”.

In separate but converging messages last week, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Governor Jameel Ahmad and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb admitted that stabilisation policies have become a way of life, that Pakistan’s growth trajectory is no longer viable, and that the old formula of short-lived growth spurts must end. Their candour is welcome — but it also exposes the uncomfortable truth that Pakistan has exhausted the limits of its current economic design.

For decades, Pakistan has run an economy powered by consumption, external borrowing, import dependence, and periodic IMF-driven stabilisation cycles. This model delivered brief moments of expansion — 5 percent to 6 percent growth every few years — followed inevitably by balance-of-payments (BoP) crises. Instead of reform, successive governments hit the brakes through high interest rates, suppressed imports, heavy taxation, and energy tariff hikes. Stabilisation became the default, not the exception.

Governor Ahmad’s diagnosis cuts through years of denial. Pakistan’s long-term growth has been declining: from an average of 3.9 percent over the last 30 years to 3.5 percent over two decades and down to 3.4 percent over the........

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