Re: Manipulation in figures quoted for State bank’s profit
Heres an article by the then senior advisor to IMF Exec Director for South Asia, Dr. Meekal Aziz
Yes, Dr Ashfaque, the data are fudged - thenews.com.pk
Dr Ashfaque asks me to do a bit of reading before making generalised statements. I suggest he do the same. He should go to the IMF website and read the staff report on the subject of fake data that Pakistan presented to the IMF. As a senior adviser to the executive director in the IMF at that time, I have never been so embarrassed for my country.
At the executive board meeting on the subject, the minutes of which are unfortunately confidential but are available with me if Dr Ashfaque would like to do some more reading, all I could do was hang my head in shame as each executive director, all 23 of them (excluding our chair which presented a weak defence written by me), castigated Pakistan in the strongest possible terms for taking money from the IMF based on cooked up data.
The IMF staff which had led missions to Pakistan during the fudging period, the smart professionals who are the best in their field and can never be duped according to Dr Ashfaque, were especially shamed because they had been taken for a ride and were shown to be clueless. A burning issue dominated the meeting. Did the IMF staff know what was going on? If they did, they misled the IMF executive board, were complicit in the fudging, and should be dismissed. If they did not, they should be dismissed for incompetence.
At the end of a highly-charged five-hour meeting, it was the decision of the executive board to fine Pakistan millions of dollars and ask the money back they had taken from the IMF during the fudging period. This is a matter of record which I suggest Dr Ashfaque look up before lecturing me on how good our economic data is. One further point. This fudging went on during an IMF programme when scrutiny of data is at its most rigorous. Imagine the fun the previous government had when there was no IMF programme!