In recent days there is increasingly appearing in both print and electronic media discussion about how to escape another International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.

For instance, in an article ‘Urgent reforms proposed to avert another IMF loan’ recently published in Dawn, quoted minister for planning, development, and special initiatives, Ahsan Iqbal, whereby he emphasised the importance of enhancing exports, and not subscribing to another IMF programme, as ‘“Pakistan’s development, economic sovereignty and even national security now hinge on one thing: how fast we can grow our exports and move to an export-led growth model… [and that] “the only way to break free from foreign crutches and avoid the next IMF programme is to rapidly increase our exports and build strong foreign exchange reserves”.’

It is, therefore, very hard to see how the country could expand its exports – in addition to making adequate level of social protection spending – for instance, while policy – under IMF programmes, World Bank development policy loans, and domestically – continues to be neoliberal, austerity-based, and pro-cyclical in nature

While expanding exports is indeed an important policy goal, yet the neoliberal, and austerity-based policy framework, both within and outside of the IMF programmes, and World Bank development policy loans – where the latter also emphasize similar structural adjustment policies as being adopted by IMF – over the last four decades or so has overall not allowed reaching any sustained macroeconomic stability, nor inclusive economic growth, while the role of the public sector has continued to diminish, all of which are otherwise important factors for enhancing domestic production, exports, and overall reaching much-needed appropriate level of productive, and allocative efficiencies.

READ MORE:IMF programme widely perceived as ‘anti-growth’: Dar

A (2008) ‘The University of Chicago Press’ published book ‘Beyond the World Bank agenda: an institutional approach to development’ pointed out with regard to World Bank adopting........

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