Pak has external debt problem and its date with China is proving expensive

We’re about two months away from elections in Pakistan -- elections that are almost certain to be shrouded in controversy, one way or another. And, worryingly for Pakistan, it appears that the economy is weakening, just in time for the instability that might follow from the country’s turbulent politics.

Under the outgoing government -- led till last April by Nawaz Sharif, three times prime minister -- the economy had appeared to be doing well. In fact, a new energy seemed to have infused Pakistan’s entrepreneurs and investors; in the last fiscal year, the economy grew at 5.8 per cent, the fastest rate in 13 years.

That now appears set to change. Economists polled by Bloomberg worry that, in the coming year, growth will slow to 5.2 per cent -- a full percentage point below the government’s own optimistic forecast.

The problem is that much growth in the recent past has been unbalanced, depending particularly on investment from China in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) -- a branch of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s world-spanning Belt and Road Initiative -- and on Pakistani government spending that matches the CPEC’s aims. China’s big bet on Pakistan’s infrastructure has to be paid for somehow, in part through the purchase of Chinese heavy engineering and other inputs.

Pervez Musharraf: The Pakistani General who wouldn't go away

Along stretches of highway and railway tracks across Pakistan, walls bear a familiar inscription: Mard kabhi boorha nahin hota, a man never grows old. It’s an advert by quacks and herbalists peddling eternal virility to aging Pakistani men. It would appear that Pakistan’s former military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf has taken this roadside assurance too seriously.

Nine years after his ouster from the presidency, and many humiliating attempts to reclaim political relevance later, he is at it again. In a recent interview with Sky News, he said that if he could return to power now he would have more legitimacy than the first time around because back then some people thought he was a dictator. He said this with a straight face.

Musharraf’s dreams are as hopeless as the claims of the roadside quacks, but that doesn’t stop him from coming up with elaborate plans to bring them about. Despite what the aphrodisiac sellers say, men do get old, and they don’t get any wiser with age.

Back in his day, Musharraf sold himself to the world as the last man standing between the Taliban and Western civilization. In the bargain, he achieved everything that a developing country’s military dictator could want: a trip to Camp David, a house in Dubai, a flat in central London, a book deal, his own TV show. You would think that after all that, he would retire, play golf and occasionally show up on the after-dinner lecture circuit. But earlier this month he announced the creation of a 23-party political alliance and appointed himself its chairman.

Many of those parties were previously unheard-of, and some of the ones that were known announced that they had nothing to do with Musharraf or his grand alliance. Still, within days Musharraf was back on TV reminiscing about his glorious rule and pitching himself as a savior-in-waiting — the man who would deliver Pakistan from its current political crisis, caused by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification from office on corruption charges.
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