RECENT chatter suggests there is significant pressure on the government to move beyond macroeconomic stabilisation. With economic activity languishing, rumours of ministerial changes have popped up as well, as if somehow specific personnel are the only thing standing in the way of six per cent growth. Despite IMF tutelage, these pressures will not be easy to stave off. Something will eventually give. What are the usual pathways to growth? In Pakistan’s case, reducing interest rates and easing up of import restrictions coupled with some sort of a tax let-off usually generates economic momentum based on consumption. This has been the script for several decades. Beyond the brief rush that it provides, its other outcomes too are fairly straightforward. There is increased pressure on scant reserves, a widening fiscal deficit and downward pressure on the currency. In some sequence and combination, this usually leads to devaluation and inflation, followed by a return to the IMF’s doorstep in the face of looming default. Macroeconomic stabilisation ensues through a throttling of economic activity via increased interest rates, import restrictions, and higher taxes. In other words, a move back to square one. For the generation gaining adulthood in the 2000s, this particular sequence has already played itself out four times, neatly coinciding with a transfer of power between different actors. The fundamentals are still the same suggesting that the planned pursuit of growth would be a fifth repetition of the boom-bust cycle in just under two decades. There is no straightforward path to growth that doesn’t see us back to square one in a year or so. What is this ‘fundamental’ that has stayed the same? If we reduce growth to a simple arithmetic problem of finding enough dollars to spend, then nothing has truly changed on that front. In fact, dollars are even harder to find today than they were a few years back. The standard source of foreign exchange, ie, exports, are stagnant. Domestic capitalists find it difficult to both make things that the rest of the world wants and getting the rest of the world to buy the thing they make. Global cheap credit liquidity has dried up, there are no substantial geostrategic rents to be obtained, no Sino or Saudi benevolent patrons who can shower billions, and no queue of dollar-armed investors waiting to set up shop in the country. The only saving grace here are the common people, who ship themselves abroad to labour in harsh conditions for the sake of their families. Their earned billions are ventilating an economy otherwise plagued by asphyxiation. This cursory, yet fairly standard, picture of the economy shows that in the current scenario, with all things being the way they are, there is no straightforward path to growth that doesn’t see us back to square one in a year or so. Mainstream, technocratic answers to breaking this bind are both familiar and banal. ‘Reform’ is the word most frequently thrown around. The power sector needs to be reformed so that the cost of making stuff (to sell to the world) can go down. The economy needs better documentation so that the burden of taxation on the formal sector (that makes things and employs people) eases up. The size of the government in terms of personnel and their regulatory footprint needs to be reduced so that there is more money available to be spent on enhancing human capabilities (and productivity). Maybe some of these standard technocratic prescriptions will take place in my lifetime (I am approaching 40). They may even lead to some of the results they’re supposedly meant to produce, but there’s little guarantee either way. There are other prescriptions too, more radical ones that involve mass mobilisation and the redistribution of means and resources to people in order to boost domestic production and consumption. However, the likelihood of such a path being traversed is even lower. Either way, past experience suggests that implementing even the most benign reforms is costly: the intra-elite political conflicts they produce are untenable, and most Pakistani decision-makers, civilian and military, are reluctant to go through with it. Why? Because politicians, even those with dubious mandates, have constituencies and status quo beneficiaries as benefactors; and the establishment, apart from being a status quo beneficiary itself, wants a resuscitation of legitimacy in the shortest time possible, which can’t be squared with the long gestation period of technocratic reform. So, instead, we’ll likely see some jugaar that opens up space for economic activity and staves off difficult questions in the short run, passing them on to the next set of faces in charge. Two such shortcuts come to mind. The first was alluded to by Khurram Husain in his piece last week — an external liquidity injection of the geostrategic/ geopolitical variant. Whether that comes through defence pacts and a backdoor to a new normal in the Middle East (or in the immediate region) is moot. If it were to transpire, it might give the Pakistani government some breathing room without changing too much domestically. There is a second shortcut too; a domestic variant, being eyed and talked about for some time now. This one involves forcibly changing the nature of fiscal relations between the centre and the provinces through an amended NFC. By starving the provinces and holding onto more resources, the centre will be able to reduce its uptake of more debt, bring down interest rates, increase development spending and maybe even offer tax rate reductions for a short period of time. The boost in growth will be welcomed, even if its wholly temporary. But in the process, a long-standing ‘irritant’ — the devolution of significant resources away from the centre — will also be solved. And it doesn’t take much to predict in whose pockets these freshly retrieved resources at the centre will end up. The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums. X: @umairjav Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2026