Islamabad, Dec 30: The International Monetary Fund’s Executive Board has paradoxically approved another $1.29 billion as financial support for Pakistan despite the multilateral institution’s own report highlighting the corruption in the debt-ridden country, which is coming in the way of repaying these loans.The IMF has just released a 186-page “Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment” that paints a grim portrait of Pakistan’s institutional decay.
“The timing is striking: the diagnostic was published just before the Board meeting that approved the latest disbursement. In effect, the IMF has acknowledged that Pakistan’s governance vulnerabilities are systemic, yet continues to lend without dismantling the ecosystem of capture that perpetuates the crisis,” the article said.
Corruption, the report concludes, is “macro-critical”, embedded in the very structure of the state. It determines who prospers, why growth remains anaemic, and why Pakistan returns to the IMF every few years with its hand out.