Every time Pakistan runs short of money, the conversation follows a familiar script. Borrow more. Tax more. Seek another IMF programme. Ask a friendly government for a deposit to shore up reserves. Almost nobody in that conversation asks the question a Chief Financial Officer asks first: what do we already own, and why is it not working harder?

This is not a rhetorical flourish. It reflects a genuine blind spot in how Pakistan conducts its economic debate. Budget season fixates on the income statement – tax collection, the fiscal deficit, subsidies, debt servicing, the terms of the next multilateral programme. The national balance sheet barely gets a mention. Yet the state sits on federal and provincial land, railway land banks, ports, airports, motorways, power generation and transmission assets, industrial estates, telecom spectrum, mineral rights and dozens of commercial enterprises. Much of this is fragmented across ministries, poorly recorded, politically managed and generating little or no commercial return. A company that owns valuable assets but keeps borrowing to fund its everyday operations is not necessarily poor. It may simply be managing its balance sheet badly. The same logic applies to a country.

There is a difference between a sovereign wealth fund in name and a credible sovereign wealth institution in practice.

There is a difference between a sovereign wealth fund in name and a credible sovereign wealth institution in practice.

The numbers on the liability side are sobering enough without exaggeration. Pakistan’s central........

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