The growing resource hunger

CONSIDER two things carefully. First, the burden on compliant taxpayers is spiralling higher and higher every year, with a marked acceleration in the preceding three years. Second, dollar-buying by the State Bank is continuing with unchecked ferocity, leaving behind little for the rest and starving private markets. Both these phenomena are symptoms of a single problem: a state apparatus that can no longer generate the resources required for its own upkeep. In short, this relentless tightening of conditions in the economy, despite the much-vaunted stabilisation that has taken place, reflects the erosion of the underlying financial and economic viability of the state, and by extension, of Pakistan’s economy. As presently constituted. These last three words are key, because it is equally important to remind ourselves that it does not have to be like this. But for the time being it is. And the problem is going to aggravate with time.