Correct diagnosis of economic problem of Pakistan.

Byline: Dr Atiq ur Rehman

TO me, correct understanding of problems is half of the solution. The first step towards solving a problem is to understand why it happened. Let's study the Middle East economies to understand the problem with Pakistan's economy. All governments in the Middle East are autocracies, yet prosperous. They don't bow their heads before the IMF and their public isn't worried about the necessities of life. Despite having a dictatorship, there is no cry for democracy. Their society is so satisfied that our people also want to be there to get peace and prosperity. These countries are far better than Pakistan in the global transparency ranking. What is the reason that these countries have reached the peak of prosperity?

One probable answer that most people will have in their minds is that these countries are rich in oil, and thanks to this, these people have reached the height of development. We also have resources but they utilized the available resources, and we could not. According to official estimates, Pakistan has the potential of generating 60,000 MW of hydroelectricity. The oil equivalent of this generation capacity is 526 million barrels annually with a value of about $42 billion. The annual oil exports of the UAE are also $42 billion. This means, the petroleum resources of UAE are roughly the same as that of hydropower resources of Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan also has abundant resources of solar and other forms of renewable energy.

Whenever electricity is generated from petrol, it will destroy the environment while electricity generated from water will not cause such hazard. This means that the claim of not having resources is futile and we have relatively high quality resources. The above arguments disprove two popular theories about our backwardness, namely the corruption theory and the resource scarcity theory. So, what is the reason that these neighbouring countries, which were built by our own workers, have gone many steps ahead of us in development? In my view, corruption is a secondary issue which arises due to deprivation of basic necessities of life. If provision of basic necessities of life is facilitated, corruption will automatically reduce.

When there are so many candidates for a job, the struggle for a job will give rise to opportunities for bribery. If cheap loans are provided to the youth to start a business, many will prefer to start their own business instead of running for a job and the...