Provincial External Loans.

Seeking assistance from international financial institutions to project finance long-term infrastructure industrial projects, and public services has drowned Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in Rs265 billion worth of loans. The primary lenders in KP's case are the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB). Ever since 2014, the KP government has been borrowing money from such financial organisations.

The officials-instead of specifying an amount in the provincial budget for the development of cities-took out loans for the purpose. It comes as a great shock that no one ever objected to this practice of running government affairs through external loans. At the very least, the opposition parties could have pointed this out and should have exerted pressure on the ruling party.

There is a plethora of evidence suggesting an increase in external debt stock reduces the fiscal space to service external debt liabilities. Thus the overall economic growth becomes stagnant. Since...