Anujan wrote:The last time negotiations went down the pakistan . . .
More seriously, this misreporting has been going on for ages. A Pakistan which was born out of lies and fabrications cannot do any better. The earliest I see in this IMF saga goes back to 1997. I quote from an IMF report
(Link):
"The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reviewed today data revisions and
misreporting by Pakistan, along with the authorities' commitment to promptly repurchase SDR18.95 million in outstanding debt to the IMF, and to voluntarily repurchase another SDR 22 million by May 31, 2000. Following the Executive Board's discussion on Pakistan, Eduardo Aninat, Deputy Managing Director and acting Chairman of the Board, summarized the discussions. Mr. Aninat stated: "
Executive Directors expressed concerns over the misreporting of fiscal data to the IMF between 1997 and 1999. Following their
discovery of discrepancies in the fiscal data in late 1999, the authorities informed IMF staff and requested technical assistance to help with the data revision process. In response, a mission from the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department went to Islamabad in January 2000 to assess the magnitude of the discrepancies, and the factors responsible for the discrepancies.
As a result of subsequent data revisions, Pakistan's budget deficit for 1997/98 was revised upward by 2 percent of GDP to 7.5 percent of GDP, and the deficit for 1998/99 was raised by 1.4 percent of GDP to 5.9 percent of GDP. The technical assistance mission, with the full cooperation of the authorities, found that the discrepancies had arisen principally in the domestic nonbank financing data, where the amount of
sales of National Savings Schemes (NSS) instruments had been erroneously recorded in the fiscal reports {That is liability has been recorded as an asset}.
External and domestic bank financing data also required revision. The corresponding adjustments to expenditure data, which have so far only been completed for 1998/99, had been mainly to interest payments--corresponding to the higher-than-previously reported domestic nonbank debt--and defense spending. In addition, some unbudgeted spending was identified. "In their discussion of the issue,
Directors expressed serious concern that the erroneous data had misled IMF staff and the Executive Board about economic performance; prevented the formulation and implementation of timely corrective measures; and resulted in the design of an adjustment program that was partly based on inaccurate information. They also noted that
the provision of inaccurate data had allowed Pakistan to make substantial purchases under the extended arrangement and the Compensatory and Contigency Financing Facility, and under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, that otherwise may not have been available. "
On that 'misreporting' episode during Gilani's time, the person involved was none other than our Birkin Babe. She was Gilani's Special Assistant on Economic Affairs
{What does she know about economics ?}. The data was presented to the WB Chief Zoellick by the liar trio of Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar, the then Finance Secretary of GoP and the ten Pakistani Executive Director to the World Bank. According to Business Recorder, the World Bank President used 'derogatory language' reflective of his serious concerns over the presentation of, what he termed, inaccurate data with the sole objective of maximising World Bank project development assistance and programme loans used largely for budgetary support.
In another editorial, a few months earlier to this shameful WB episode, the Business Recorder wrote as follows:
"How different methods may yield different results is obvious from the previous government's claim, based on CPI, that
poverty had retreated from 34.46 percent in 2001 to 23.94 percent in '05, while as per the WB findings the figure for poverty head count in '05 was around 29.2 percent. The claim, though, may also have
something to do with our economic managers' proclivity to fudge figures in order to hide unpleasant facts. Notably, at the time most people familiar with the issue were saying that over 30 percent people in this country lived below the poverty line, the government declared that the figure was around 24 percent, directing the statistics department to use the same in its official documents.
To justify the feat, it simply shifted its model of measuring poverty from CPI to caloric intake. Then there are discrepancies in the figures put out by the Federal Bureau of Statistics and the State Bank, which surely is not helpful for those responsible for addressing the issue, especially at the present time when the highest ever inflation has pushed a lot more people into poverty."
Though the above IMF report also said that Pakistan had taken some measures to stop such misreporting, later events have clearly disproved that optimism. A habitual, perpetual, incorrigible liar which is Pakistan.