The ingenuity of our bureaucracy saved the day. Ministries were renamed, not retrenched. The Health Ministry donned the new robes of Health Services Regulations and Co-ordination, Education became Education and Professional Training, and Food and Agriculture got dubbed as the Ministry of National Food Security and Research. The business model was somewhat Shakespearean: 'call a ministry by any name; it will have the same positions'.
With some thirty ministries, we outscore the UK and Indian cabinets consisting of twenty-one and twenty-four ministers, respectively. Perhaps we should not grudge Islamabad all these Ministries. After all, current expenditures contribute to GDP growth, and more government means less unemployment. But that inconvenient truth, what do they do, rears its fulsome head.
Governments are not corporates, judged on the basis of top and bottom lines. Nor can all those 'ratios' we use to sense a company's health be applied to government. Also, government's uniqueness does not always permit the use of benchmarking indices.
So how does one evaluate the performance of ministries?There are certain Ministries and departments that always remain below the radar. We can't, for instance, be intrusive about the workings of the Atomic Energy Commission or the Strategic Plans Division Force. Ministry of Defence too is largely off-limit, even if the recently leaked Abbottabad Commission report makes one wonder if it should.
Then there are Ministries whose results are long term: Science and Technology, Foreign Affairs, Climate Change. Yes, you can question what they are sowing today, as the Parliamentary Committees try to, but often what you reap is clouded by exogenous factors or unintended consequences. 'Never accept policy failure' is part of the Civil Service DNA. It also has experience, information, and jargon advantages to outwit the Committees.
Unfortunately, for some ministries their performance is quite quantifiable. Numbers talk.
On that score, Board of Investment and Privatisation Commission are easy targets.
FDI has slid 25% since 2013 and we have the lowest Investment to GDP ratio in the region - including Afghanistan. BoI cannot take credit for CPEC either. There are several other contenders, Zardari included, all forgetting it is mainly a Chinese initiative, part of its 'One Belt One Road' policy. Pakistan is only one of the sixty countries covered by OBOR, attracting about 5% of the reported trillion dollars planned by China for this geo-politic policy thrust.
Privatisation Commission has proceeded on furlough after some quick pickings of the low hanging fruit: divestment of equity in profit making state enterprises. Privatization of the loss making ones -DISCOs, PIA, PSM - seems to be off the screen, despite the government's stated policy to reform and let go. For the commendable job done, the Chairman has been 'elevated' to another glorified sinecure. Does similar fate await the Chairman BoI who has established himself as a TV personality, mostly in the role of Defender of the faith, breeding lilacs out of the dead land? Meanwhile, road shows masquerade as FDI strategy.
The Professor presides over quite a handful: Planning, Development, and Reforms. He can do none of these. He can only give us visions (neatly wrapped hollow structures), sermons (that mistake reformism for reforms), and hopes (cocktail of game changers and game of thrones). Meanwhile, Federal Development spending as a percentage of revenues is Southward-bound.
In questioning the Quetta Commission Report the Ministry of Interior shot itself in the foot, attracting greater attention to its ineptitude, coming dangerously close to self-indictment, and, unwittingly, adding greater laurels to Justice Isa's rich attributes. Changing the Interior Secretary - once a year - is a ludicrous cover-up.
The one ministry that numerology does not favour is Commerce. No roller coaster ride here; only a secular decline. If Exports go up we will have to thank Divine assistance for this small miracle, not any innovative policies slipping out of the Engineer's lips that address the fundamental weaknesses of our export capability.
We see no signs of any serious introspection; no acceptance of the fact that the art of war has changed and you can't fight today's battles with yesterday's weaponry consisting of trade fairs, so-called market access, and 'export packages'. The Engineer has finally heard us. He is no longer blaming the world for the exporting woes. He now wants the other Ministries to own the blame.
Meanwhile, let's welcome the fourth Commerce Secretary of this regime. He comes with no related experience (STPF 2015/18 had 'discovered' positions in Commerce are of a technical nature!) but we hear good things about him. There are several Ministries whose role escapes us. With no states (Bahawalpur, Kalat, etc) left, Fata under the control of KPK governor, and FATA reforms handed over to the Sartaj Aziz committee, Ministry of States and Frontier Regions is nauseatingly redolent of the Raj. If the sole function of Ministry of Religious Affairs is Hajj policy surely it can be done just as easily by the Cabinet Secretariat. If the Ministry of Industries cannot do anything about the inefficient state enterprises under its control, if it can do nothing to influence the ups and downs of the manufacturing sector, if it can callously leave consumers to the mercy of car assemblers, why have it? Produce the numbers, Sir, to prove us wrong.
These are mere samples. There is a pressing need for the Parliament to periodically examine the role, performance and efficacy of the Ministries - indeed their raison d'etre. It can't be left to Awam ki Adalat.
In terms of quantifiable performance, and it is not easy for us to say it, the Accountant walks tall. Debt and Current Account Deficit may ring alarm bells, we may quibble with his numbers and narrative, question the sustainability of success, but every KPI - revenues, fiscal deficit, FX reserves, inflation, growth - entitles him to a victory lap. But do we find in the Accountant's success the reasons for the failure of the others?
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Copyright Business Recorder, 2017