IT has now become an established political norm that elected representatives of the people hide their incompetence by shifting the buck to the undefended civil servants. The same mantra was sung in the meeting of federal cabinet on Tuesday. An outrageous discussion of two and half hours was held on the out-of-bottle ‘genie’ of high price spiral for which five ministers and one advisor from the political class pointed their accusing finger on bureaucracy for delays in the import of food commodities. However, top representative of Ministry of National Food Security showed spine and defended his ministry and bureaucracy by calling spade a spade. He told that summaries for the wheat and sugar import were sent, in compliance with directives of the Prime Minister of April 2020, right on time to the ECC. The Prime minister once again expressed the resolve of making sustained efforts to bring down the prices of essential consumers’ goods to an affordable level, about which people are not optimistic. He directed the Ministry of National Food Security for establishing close coordination with provincial governments to assess the demand of food commodities.
But it is a bitter truth that after 18th Amendment food and agriculture are entirely provincial subjects and the ministry has advisory role. Moreover, for foreign exchange strapped country like Pakistan import of wheat does not ensure smooth supply chain. When the first tender for wheat import was floated, the international quoted price was $234 per ton. In the second tender it went up to $274 and in third tender it went up to $284. It were the vested interest decisions of the government that allowed subsidised export of wheat and sugar first and then allowed the cartel mafia stakeholders in the garb of private sector to import the commodities. It is for the elected political leadership to give vision for setting the direction of economy right, on which bureaucracy formulate policies for the weal and welfare of the people. If the same leadership that protected the vested interest by taking skewed decisions, which the civil servants have to implement, then it is the moral responsibility of elected political class to take the blame. It was the ruling leadership that in the decade of 60s that gave the vision of long term planning and execution for sectors of agriculture, industry and energy. The selfless and competent bureaucracy did planning and implementation and the economy registered a GDP growth of 8 percent with increasing output and employment.
