Anjum Ibrahim
There is a widespread perception that in Pakistan there are a plethora of very well researched papers but gathering dust in government offices, penned by sector experts (domestic and international) — some commissioned by well-meaning incoming administrations (through setting up task forces) or through technical assistance provided by international donor agencies (targeted towards notable shortcomings in ministries/departments) or necessitated by technology improvements backed by emerging areas of concern (example climate change).
These research papers with detailed recommendations could have enabled our administrations to take timely and appropriate policy decisions, but they remain, at best, unread and, at worst, not implemented as their recommendations are opposed by relevant powerful influential groups. In some instances, the policy of a key political figure, perhaps with the best intent in the world, is allowed to prevail — a policy that more often than not fails to take account of prevailing macro and/or micro conditions due to lack of qualifications and/or experience. It is therefore little wonder that a common prevailing element in nearly all donor loans is highlighting poor governance in Pakistan but instead of seeking specific reforms to improve governance donors typically focus on sector-specific conditions which have consistently failed to deal with the underlying problems; and which accounts for Pakistan currently on its twenty-fourth International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan.
The need to improve governance has been acknowledged by successive governments – civilian and military. Civil service reforms were first proposed as far back as in 1973. Commissions and committees have been periodically established to deal with civil service reforms that, on paper, focused on recruitment, promotion, training and capacity building, though their recommendations remained largely unimplemented. The reason: incoming administrations, including the incumbent, are convinced that the civil service is extremely politically polarized and proceed to appoint their loyalists to senior positions to ensure that their directives are followed. Critics of course contend that the appointments ensure that party loyalists are awarded lucrative contracts and their personal issues, legitimate or otherwise, are speedily resolved; and to further muddy the waters the tit-for-tat approach by successive governments has implied the use (or misuse/abuse) of powers to implicate (legitimately or not) their adversaries in criminal cases which, sadly, mirrors the latter’s actions when they were in power.
To complicate matters further the civil service examination produces generalists instead of sector experts and, additionally, provincial quotas further upset the purely merit based policy of appointments, promotions.
To resolve civil service-related issues, the incumbent Defence Minister Khawaja Asif petitioned the Supreme Court and secured a landmark judgment on 12 June 2013 barring interim governments from making appointments/transfers and limiting their powers to daily administrative functions. The judgment also called for the constitution of a federal commission to ensure that all appointments to public offices be conducted on the basis of merit — and the court laid out a procedure for appointing heads of statutory, autonomous, semi-autonomous and regulatory bodies. Khawaja Asif then went back to the supreme court with another petition: to reverse this judgment and was successful in having it overturned, with the court declaring that it is the prerogative of the federal government to make appointments.
In the interim — before the judgment was over-turned — the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif set up a three-man team, all respected for their integrity, and empowered them to short-list candidates for senior appointments. Their selections did not gel with the prevalent views of the ruling PML-N and the three men exhibited enough integrity to voluntarily resign. Subsequent appointments were as controversial as in the past, which continues to this day.
On 5 August 2025, Khawaja Asif attacked the civil service in a tweet: “More than half of the bureaucracy of our dear homeland has already acquired property in Portugal and is preparing to obtain citizenship. These are well-known bureaucrats. Yet, after devouring billions of rupees, they are comfortably living a retired life… One of Buzdar’s closest bureaucrats has collected four billion rupees just in salami for his daughters’ weddings and is now calmly enjoying a retired life. Politicians, on the other hand, gobble up the leftovers and make a fuss, with neither plots nor foreign citizenship, because they have to contest elections. This bureaucracy is polluting the sacred land of Pakistan.” While some reports allege that his attack was person-specific yet what must be disconcerting for the stakeholders and the general public is that he did not deem it necessary to provide proof of the veracity of his charge/claim and, even more disturbingly, he did not deem it necessary to present a solution.
Civil service reforms continue to be bandied about, yet implementation remains weak, though the incumbent government has focused on cutting down the numbers currently drawing a salary at the taxpayers’ expense. However, it is critical for the government to undertake one reform measure that would contribute to a visible improvement in the performance of two key sectors that continue to anchor the entire economy in its present fragile state: the power sector and the tax sector. The two have traditionally been run by generalists focused on a carrot and stick approach rather than to develop a transformative sector policy inclusive of structural changes.
Power sector experts together with economists would have warned administrations that setting up coal plants up-country are not economically viable and are a health hazard to boot while solar energy incentives will not reduce the burden on the government given the prevailing contracts with independent power producers that allow for capacity payments and repatriation of profits. The micro vision would be to highlight that to-date generation is higher than demand and the focus must be on upgrading the obsolete transmission system.
Federal Board of Revenue must be headed not by a disciplinarian focused on evaders and avoiders (though that too is necessary) but on formulating a tax structure based on the ability to pay principle rather than on squeezing as much revenue as possible from inequitable indirect taxes, currently accounting for more than 75 to 80 percent of all collections (as direct tax collections are diluted with the addition of withholding taxes in the sales tax mode) whose incidence on the poor is greater than on the rich.
To conclude, if just these two sectors are allowed to be managed by sector experts aided by economists the country would go a long way towards arresting the rise in poverty levels which are currently at a high of 44.2 percent as per the World Bank and thereby defuse the risk of socio-economic unrest.
