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Pathological haters find it difficult to do basic nos when they contend that PTI inherited an economy as bad as have PPP and PMLN. This is a patent lie! No government has had to contend with the level of CAD that the new PTI cabinet had to rein back significantly immediately
On top of that the singularly incompetent pmln regime had burdened the system with excessive short term external commercial borrowings to a level never experienced by Pakistan, and a large percentage of these liabilities were maturing with 24 months of PTI coming into power
In period of low interest rates & ample multilateral facilities available, the pmln regime perversely chose to borrow commercially at high rates and short tenure. This was a period where any government wanting leave a positive legacy would have borrowed long tenure & preferably
The new PTI Goverment is having not only to service the maturing loans but also build a debt profile that not insanely short as was left by PMLN. Never has pakistan or a new Government had to contend with a debt profile as insanely structured as that left by PMLN for PTI
As if inheriting a thoroughly screwed up the external front was not a bad enough legacy, PMLN left a the bomb of exploding power sector capacity payments that directly translate into increase tariff for the consumer. The capacity payment in 2014 was c Rs260bn that is now c Rs1Tr
The pmln regime added power capacity with absurdly high $ guarantees to the gencos was such that the country now has one of the most expensive electricity tariffs that will ensure that our power costs are about 20-40% higher than that of our regional competitors
The simple fact is that the so called experienced PMLN geniuses could not device a power tariff structure even within the framework of CPEC, power projects that would reduce the overall tariff and not hugely unfavourable "Pay or take" terms. Instead PMLN negotiated terms that
have significantly increased per unit tariff costs. Quite conservatively the PMLN inducted projects have resulted in capacity tariff per unit to increase from about Rs3 in 2014 to presently c Rs9 & expected to go up more - or almost 70-90% increase in overall electricity charges
As if the legacy was not bad enough, the inability of PMLN government to ensure adequate structural reforms as prescribed by IMF has meant that the new PTI government has to undertake upfront painful reform measures that the previous pmln regime had no compulsion to carry out
