With all the buzz and excitement about Naya Pakistan one underlying assumption is that we are starting from a very precarious situation and all was about to go wrong, we were on the brink of disaster (especially, economically) and are given a new life by the change of government. Well, lets dig in a bit on that. The topic being huge, I will publish small pieces covering small segments of the discussion, so please bear with me without judging until I’m done.
The graph in the picture shows the debt to GNI ratio (courtesy: https://www.gapminder.org/). Simply put, GNI (Gross National Income) is what Pakistanis earn (people & organizations, inside and outside Pakistan) in a year. And debt is the loan Pakistan government has taken from foreigners (foreign organizations and governments). So what do you think, is it too bad? What about the trend? If we take the 2018 numbers this ratio would be roughly 30-33%. So is this number good or bad? Depends on what we compare it with. Here is a list to compare with: http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/site-content/IDS-2018.pdf (see page 12 in part II) – interestingly the list covers only low and middle income countries, may be the high income countries are too shy to show their Debt to GNI ratios. Just to give you an idea the Debt to GDP ratios of Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, Germany, France, England and US are 67.2, 68.9, 51.2, 27.8, 59.8, 96.3, 86.3 and 108. Yes, we might be bad, but are we terrible? I don’t think so.
Let me know what you think after the comparison. My bet is that you’ll feel better than before 🙂
Clarification!: This (or these, as it is likely to be a series) is not meant to say k Sab Acha Hai, and that nothing needs to be done. Instead, the message I want to convey is that our proneness to negativity has gotten the better of us and we might be viewing the situation worse than it actually is. And yes, it is bad in certain areas, but not as bad as we might think. Secondly this is neither in defense of any political party nor in favor of any.
#Pakistan #Economy #Debt #think #evidencebasedoptimism #MakingSense
MakingSense 