THE World Bank’s Reclaiming Momentum Towards Prosperity report presents a sobering reality: poverty has climbed back to 25.3 per cent on the national line; and close to 45pc of Pakistanis fall below the bank’s new $4.20-a-day threshold.
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45pc → reclaim → threshold
Stabilising our way into deeper poverty has exposed the limits of conventional macroeconomic management.
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Stabilising → stabilise → management
Speaking last week at the International Conference on Inclusive and Resilient Economic Empowerment and Growth, organised by the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund in Islamabad, I put one question at the centre: how do we break this cycle?
Accelerating growth requires recognising where real growth originates.
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growth → speak → growth
Pakistan’s largest capital investment of this decade never appeared in a Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), Annual Development Programme (ADP), or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
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investment → appear → Programme
Farmers, shopkeepers and households imported about 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, and the same again in 2025.
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Farmers → import → 2025
They used their own savings, because diesel costs and the unwinding of unsustainable energy subsidies made it rational.
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it → use → subsidies
They are an obstacle to citizen-led growth.
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They → lead → growth
When fiscal pressure forced the state to pare them back, citizens moved faster than planners to protect their own balance sheets.
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citizens → force → sheets
The state’s response was to tax panel imports and revise net-metering terms.
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response → tax → terms
So when we ask how planning can accelerate growth, we should first admit that citizens are already ahead of the plan.
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citizens → ask → plan
The question is whether the state will remove the friction in their way or keep chasing donors.
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state → remove → donors
Three shifts would make the difference.
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shifts → make → difference
Unpriced risk: Macroeconomic stability cannot survive risk that no one has priced.
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one → survive → that
Pakistan already has a climate budget.
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Pakistan → have → budget
It is not the one captured by the recently introduced climate budget tagging.
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It → capture → tagging
It is the one written after each disaster.
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It → write → disaster
Major floods now produce post-disaster needs assessments, reconstruction budgets, and emergency appeals.
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floods → produce → assessments
That is our real climate expenditure: unplanned and largely borrowed — a permanent drag on fiscal space.
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That → borrow → space
It is pricing climate risk before it arrives.
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it → price → risk
Pakistan already has a climate budget — the one written after each disaster.
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Pakistan → have → disaster
In practice, this means treating climate losses as a contingent liability of each province, the way we already treat circular debt and SOE guarantees.
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we → mean → debt
The Fiscal Risk Statement mentions disasters but puts no number on them.
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Statement → mention → them
Each province can estimate its average annual loss from floods, heat, and drought, and appropriate a share of it every year as an expected cost.
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province → estimate → cost
Budget theorists call this ‘expected-value budgeting’.
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theorists → call → this
A loss that is budgeted becomes a decision.
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that → budget → ?
A loss that is not budgeted becomes a bailout, often paid through the Benazir Income Support Programme’s emergency transfers.
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that → budget → transfers
Maintenance first: Economic productivity depends on assets that work.
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that → depend → assets
That makes resilience a maintenance problem before it is a development problem.
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it → make → ?
Embankments, drains, canals, and roads do not fail because nobody built them.
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nobody → fail → them
They fail because their recurrent budgets are starved.
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budgets → fail → ?
Yet our economic conversation stays inside the development budget.
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conversation → stay → budget
The federal PSDP alone carries a throw-forward of about Rs11 trillion, and new schemes keep joining the queue, while existing assets go unmaintained.
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assets → carry → queue
The ADP builds the embankment.
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ADP → build → embankment
The operations and maintenance line decides whether it holds.
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it → decide → ?
Protecting maintenance allocations for water assets would preserve existing capital and buy more resilience per rupee than most new projects.
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Protecting → protect → projects
One can see where local money is actually spent.
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money → see → ?
The most local spending stream is not an SDG-linked programme.
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stream → link → ?
Nobody screens them.
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Nobody → screen → them
A single check asking whether the asset will survive the next monsoon would protect more local capital than every formal climate project combined.
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asset → ask → project
Green growth at the local level will not come from specialised projects.
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growth → come → projects
…and 26 more, not listed.
The Aporia
