When electricity bills rise, fuel becomes unaffordable and the IMF demands fiscal discipline, the government must answer a simple question: who is actually being asked to sacrifice?

If the government wants citizens to conserve electricity, it must conserve.

And if the IMF demands reform, Pakistan’s government must ensure that reform does not become another word for asking the poorest citizens to pay for the failures of the state.

When electricity bills rise, fuel becomes unaffordable and the IMF demands fiscal discipline, the government must answer a simple question: who is actually being asked to sacrifice?

Pakistan’s economic crisis has increasingly become a crisis of who pays.

For the ordinary Pakistani, austerity is no longer an economic policy discussed in budget documents. It is a daily reality. It is the electricity bill that consumes an ever larger portion of a household’s income. It is the rising price of fuel that increases the cost of commuting, transporting goods and running a business. It is the higher price of food that follows every increase in energy and transportation costs.

Yet the question that deserves far greater attention is this: when the country is asked to practise austerity, is austerity being imposed equally?

The International Monetary Fund has become a familiar presence in Pakistan’s economic policymaking. Under the current programme, Pakistan has committed itself to fiscal consolidation, energy-sector reforms and the gradual removal of untargeted energy subsidies. The government has also assured the Fund that electricity, gas and other energy prices will continue to be adjusted.

There is a legitimate economic argument behind some of these measures. Pakistan cannot indefinitely spend more than it earns, accumulate circular debt, subsidise inefficiency and expect the consequences to disappear. Energy-sector losses cannot simply be transferred indefinitely to future generations.

But fiscal discipline cannot mean passing every cost downwards.

The central question........

© Minute Mirror