Pak Tea House

Raza Rumi

Is it the case that finally the centuries old steelframe is getting irrelevant in the fast changing urban Pakistan. In a country of 170 million, there were not enough competent and interested candidates to fill up the vacancies for the competitive examination. If on one hand, this trend betrays the decline of institutions, on the other it spells doom for the future of Pakistan’s governance. There can be no compromise on a capable civil service to manage and implement policies. Singapore and many other countries attract the best and here we are, with massive unemployment, not finding enough people to fill the vacancies. Yes the private sector is more attractive and perhaps should be but what about state’s regulatory and redistributive functions?

CSS Exam fails to fill 100 vacancies - Daily News, 4/25/08
ISLAMABAD: The country’s Civil Services structure is facing an unprecedented downfall with educated youth losing interest in civil bureaucracy as the latest Central Superior Services (CSS) competition could not even produce the number of successful candidates against the available posts. Against the total 290 available posts, the number of successful candidates in the 2007 CSS competition was merely 190, leaving almost 100 vacancies unoccupied till fresh induction is made through the next CSS competition.

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While there may be news of power, food and water crisis in Pakistan, an alternative analysis suggests that Pakistan has the capacity to attract massive foreign investment. Let’s hope the new government is able to return Pakistan to rule of law and stability and take full advantage of this timely opportunity.

- Samad (more…)

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Moin Ansari’s piece is quite optimistic:

The fundamentals of the Pakistani economy are sound. Arab and Asian money is still flowing into the Stock Exchange and the entire country looks like a construction site. You don’t read all about the 9 new 5 star hotels being developed in Karachi, or the flyover, and the motorways. You don’t hear about the massive idustrialization and the six industrial zones being set up by China. You don’t hear about giant new cities springing up where there was only desert. Pakistan has the 4th largest coal reserves in the world and now most of the cars run on Liquid Petroleum Gas.

There is excitement in the economic air and stock exchange reflects it. My servant from 30 years ago called me today–from his own mobile! I was in schock, but shouldn’t have been. 85 million Pakistanis have cell phone now and that number is growing.

Read the full post here

Shahid Kardar, the former Finance Minister of the Punjab Province, has written a two part series on the current wheat/atta crisis in Pakistan. He makes some startling comparisons:

While the Pakistani farmer was being paid less than half of what the government has been willing to pay to the Australian and American farmer for the wheat imported from them, and with price of flour significantly higher beyond our borders, the government continued to provide cheaper wheat to the flour mills, over a million tons of which, as mentioned above, was smuggled out.

He is clear on who the real beneficiaries of this crisis are:

The beneficiaries of this bizarre wheat policy have been middlemen (Arthis), officials of the Food Department, the flourmills, traders, and personnel of border security forces, all of who connived in this smuggling racket. As a result, the Pakistani consumer ended up paying close to the international prices for wheat while the Pakistani farmer failed to get a remunerative price for his product.

The beneficiaries of the lower price of wheat supplied from government stores to the flour mills were not those intended, the domestic urban consumers, but this motley crowd, which makes one question the efficiency of the nature of the wheat subsidy as it stands today. Read more here

On potential solutions, Kardar has to say the following:

Instead of distorting prices, employing two possible strategies could ensure better targeting of the subsidy: cash transfers and mobile distribution units, to those most in need.

Direct cash transfers and grants, a form of social assistance, to target the poor and the vulnerable segments of the population — generally the disabled, elderly, female headed households, orphans, widows and unemployed and unskilled household heads with large families — would be the best way to help those most in need of food. For urban areas, a self-targeting mechanism can be employed whereby the katchi abadis or residential areas colonised by poorer households areas can be identified for the disbursement of such a cash grant — the needy and the vulnerable would be targeted by virtue of them inhabiting the poor locality.

Full text of this part here