IMF report: Light on substance

A fundamental weakness in the report is the reluctance to admit the role of external agencies.

- BY SHAHID KARDAR

THE much-awaited IMF assessment of Pakistan's governance and corruption landscape has triggered chatter on talk shows and social media. For a report that likely cost the country close to $10 million, it is a disappointment. The information and analysis it provides and the messages it conveys, could easily have been communicated in one-tenth of its length. What we have received instead is a long, self-righteous document whose 186 pages carry far more physical weight than the weight of any original insight or substance.

Much of it is dense verbiage and platitudes — a superficial bureaucratic sputter being presented as a forensic investigation unearthing high crime. Embellished by loads of hearsay it is essentially a compendium of heavily padded restatement and recycling of issues, findings and diagnoses long known to Pakistanis and analysed to exhaustion in the media. There is plenty of development-speak and rhetorical flourish but little that deepens understanding, and even less that charts new, sharper directions and frameworks for reform.

The only quantitative metric offered to demonstrate the scale of corruption — and which set off animated discussions in the media — is the report's sensational claim that NAB recovered Rs5.3 trillion in the last two years, equivalent to four per cent of GDP. No evidence, source, or methodology drawn on for verification seemingly accompanies this number in a report that sermonises transparency and accountability. In fact, NAB's own website does not confirm it; instead, it cites a cumulative recovery of Rs6.7tr over its entire 25-year existence.

Furthermore, the report does not provide a breakdown of this figure cash recovered, the paper valuations of public land reclaimed and the settlements reached. And it is silent on the number of corruption cases resolved or on the action taken against the perpetrators of the crimes.