Here it comes

IT seems the finance minister’s meeting with the US treasury secretary last week has yielded some understandings that are already beginning to play themselves out. Consider the decisions made at the last Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) meeting. Subsidies totalling Rs255 billion were approved for ‘exporters’ and, it seems, a conscious decision has been made to pull government funds away from schemes to promote remittances and channel them towards exports instead. So far, so good. The problem comes when you realise that these are subsidies and the country is on an IMF programme which specifically forbids subsidies. For example, only this past May, in the last review of the programme,…