Comment - Good governance a must for economic growth

The most serious challenge our policy makers and economic gurus face today is to achieve a higher economic growth rate, 8% or 9%, and to be on par with our regional guiding stars China and India.

For this, they propose to follow the strategies of China and India. They present hair-splitting arguments about socialism and capitalism quoting Adam Smith, Keynes or Freidman.

Eventually they blame the backward thinking of the people, trade unions and the leftist parties for not permitting them to implement their policies, sell state owned enterprises, lands and other resources.

As a child made a king understood, the latter's nudity when the king was in his new clothes, according to a fable, an economic analyst has showed the important stumbling block to achieve this desired growth rate.

He pointed out that if the country can achieve good governance and ethnic peace we can achieve higher economic growth. Corruption in the country clips around 2% of the GDP and the war crushes another significant part of the GDP.

Good governance has become a central point in the country's economic development today. There are several independent reports such as Auditor General's reports and COPE report that highlighted the magnitude of corruption and misappropriation of the country's economic resources. A study conducted for a foreign aid agency due to be published shortly will give a detailed analysis of the situation.

This issue is being raised occasionally in Parliament as well. Parliamentarians have pointed out various rural infrastructure projects that are not implemented at all but the contractors are fully paid. This means 100% of the funds have been misused.

The most serious problem today is that all the independent reports or the revelations in Parliament have not helped even minutely to change the situation.

All responsible high officials and politicians continue to hold the same positions, without facing any disciplinary or legal inquiry. No new measures are taken to prevent such situations. So the public is compelled to assume that corruption has been 'legalised' in the country.

As economic analysts say bad governance is a result of weaknesses in our constitution. Corruption is a result of these weaknesses of the constitution.

Today nobody is responsible or accountable in highly complex central, provincial and local government authorities.

The independence of the public service has declined extensively and government officials have become political stooges.

The dilution of duties and responsibilities of the executive, legislature and the judiciary is clearly seen, making serious issues in the functioning of the state. One clear example is the new guidelines for school admission of children.

The Education Ministry apparently failed to prepare the guidelines and the onus fell on the Supreme Court.

All plans and proposals prepared by the relevant experts, even in highly technical fields would be amended or rejected by the political authority merely considering its political aspects. This happened to the proposals submitted by the educationists on school admissions a few months ago.

Corruption is rampant at all levels in the state mechanism, from grand to petty. Ministers are bold enough to proclaim that they use dozens of cars paying millions of rupees as rent from state coffers and at the same time they advise the people to tighten their belts though they boast about improving the economy.

The theories of the Treasury Secretary and the Central Bank Governor explaining the economic awakening is all Greek to people and their justifying the grievances faced by people is a big disappointment.

Market forces function under certain conditions or else the theories are based on some assumption.

An economy which functions and practises bad governance will never deliver the desired fruits of the free market economy.