Pakistan Governance Crisis: IMF Has Only Stated the Obvious

The IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment is not a revelation; it is a mirror Pakistan’s ruling elites have avoided for decades. What the report exposes — institutional decay, unchecked discretion, opaque decision-making, and a culture of privilege — is neither new nor surprising. What is alarming is that Pakistan still requires an external lender to tell it what its own citizens have been shouting for years: corruption is not an aberration but the organizing principle of governance in this country.

The IMF’s findings cut through the official narratives of “reform”, “revival”, and “investment climate improvement”. At the heart of Pakistan’s economic paralysis lies a state captured by networks of political, bureaucratic, and business interests that thrive on informality and opacity. The tax system remains deliberately complex to create rent-seeking opportunities. SOEs continue bleeding because political appointees treat them as fiefdoms. The judiciary — hobbled by colonial-era laws — cannot enforce contracts, discouraging both investment and fair competition. And the powerful remain insulated from accountability through special exemptions, selective transparency, and politically driven discretion.

The IMF’s pointed reference to the Special Investment Facilitation Council is especially damning. By questioning its opaque functioning and the immunity granted to its officials, the report exposes the contradiction at the heart of Pakistan’s economic strategy: demanding investor confidence while institutionalizing unaccountable power. If the government had confidence in its own governance architecture, it would not have delayed publication of the report for months.

The Fund’s proposed reform agenda — transparency, parliamentary oversight of financial discretion, mandatory e-procurement, restructuring of anti-corruption bodies, and removal of preferential treatment — is basic housekeeping for any functioning state. Yet in Pakistan, these measures appear radical only because they directly threaten entrenched interests.

The tragedy is that Pakistan does not suffer from a lack of diagnosis; it suffers from a lack of will. Every governance failure highlighted in the GCDA has been documented for years, yet every government has chosen to preserve privilege over reform. The IMF can nudge, advise, and pressure — but it cannot manufacture political courage.

Pakistan’s elites may believe they can continue business as usual. The economy says otherwise. Time for denial is over.