The latest IMF's 2025 Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA) report offers a detailed examination of how institutional fragmentation, regulatory discretion and entrenched privilege continue to obstruct development. It states that unless Pakistan dismantles the structures of elite capture embedded across the state, no stabilisation effort will produce durable or inclusive growth.

Behind this diagnosis lies a deeper political-economic contradiction. The GCDA adopts a neoliberal framework: discipline the state, rationalise institutions and liberalise markets. But Pakistan's history shows that neoliberalism rarely challenges elite domination. Instead, it often reinforces it by strengthening the very networks capable of absorbing, redirecting or diluting reform.

For decades, Pakistan's governance has been shaped by state enterprise managers, regulatory elites, business families, cartelised industries and entrenched bureaucratic groups. These networks have survived repeated reform attempts. The IMF itself notes that earlier........

© The Express Tribune