THE evidence is piling up that without a dramatic change of course the economy will sink deeper into a quagmire that takes us all to a very bad place. The latest in the parade of grim numbers is a revelation by the Planning Commission that the number of people living below the poverty line has surged since 2018.

Since 2001, these numbers had been declining, sometimes slowly, other times rapidly. But for the first time in nearly a quarter century, we have seen them rise, from 21.9 per cent of the population living below the poverty to 28.8pc today.

A few months ago, another revelation came from the World Bank that Pakistan’s economy was no longer lifting people out of poverty, even when it grew. Successive growth spurts generated fewer jobs, lifted fewer people out of poverty and on the whole promoted greater inequality rather than sharing the fruits of growth more equitably.

Corporate profitability spiked rapidly during this period, although much of that was also just inflation-driven, meaning inflation was being priced into corporate cash flows. But one thing that did not adjust to inflation was wages and incomes, which declined or remained flat (at best) in real terms during this period.

The economy has been sinking into this quagmire for many years now and this parade of dismal data that has been coming out for months is only telling us that the industrial structure we now have is no longer capable of carrying the country into the future. It is not competitive on the global market and cannot fetch........

© Dawn