Well, as expected, after some theatrical sparring on the budget by the two main coalition partners in order to perhaps gain some political mileage, the budget 2025-26 was passed last week without properly addressing the main concerns relating to the domestic industry, investment, growth, and employment generation. Result, another typically IMF-induced budget, shifting the pain on to the common man and legitimate businesses through a range of policymaking that is largely unconnected to the underlying ground realties and the long-term sustainability of the national economy. A single-minded focus on short-term macro-economic stability, even if it comes on the back of a borrowing binge (latest being an almost $4.00 billion budget/reserves support debt from China), a thoughtless introduction of revised cum lowered import tariffs (somewhat tapered but naturally not enough) and excessive coercive taxation that further alienates documented business from a fair shot at market principles, thereby compromising its competitiveness while handing over a distinct advantage to the ones who opt to remain out of the tax net. In essence, exacerbates a prevailing negative operational environment that favours corruption, encourages rent-seeking, resorts to a counterproductive oversight through draconian tax legislations, and an expanding footprint of the state amidst an environment where existing state-owned enterprises already cost the national exchequer a lofty 6 trillion rupees every year. Absent are any reforms aimed at improving ease of doing business or distancing the revenue collector from the taxpayer, or on addressing a prevalent toxic business model that redefines competitive advantage by intertwining it with political, bureaucratic, and mafia muscles. At one’s juncture in life that spans six generations of industrial experience, one feels pained by these repetitive long-term directional failures onthe part of the decision makers with little knowledge of economic management or lacking any desire of learning from Pakistan’s economic history. To anyone familiar with it, the 70s and, to some extent 2010s, such a deindustrialization phenomenon shouldn’t come as a surprise. What the economic managers need to know is that industry failures can be much more rapid than what statistics (that too are compromised) can sometimes capture, and once triggered can be difficult to arrest. So, no wonder, today Pakistan’s industry continues to dismantle at an alarming pace and despite claims on stability, there remains a beeline of foreign........

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