ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: The government is putting final touches to a strategy to win hearts and minds of hapless citizens as it appeared to be gearing up for the general election.

Its first tactic is likely to ensure no electricity loadshedding in the coming summer after half a decade of outages in sizzling heat.

Better still, power tariffs may be frozen at the current levels while massive amounts will be borrowed from banks to pay off the circular debt so that private power companies run their plants at capacity. The weather, too, will help the government because a possible drop in temperature in the coming weeks will ease gas shortage.

Another tactic being finalised is to use the rapidly growing Benazir Income Support Programme to pay electricity bills of poor consumers while withdrawing subsidy from high-end consumers.

If these tactics and other steps mean higher inflation and wider fiscal deficit for the next government, the current policy-makers would rather not think about such issues. After all, the name of the game is politics and the PPP is here to win elections.

“Now that everyone has started talking about elections, the government has decided to move into a popular relief mode,” a cabinet member told Dawn. The PPP’s shibboleth of roti, kapra aur makan would be the “guiding principle” in the lead-up to elections, he added.

The minister said the government was considering taking back the recent increase in petroleum prices, but the step was still to be discussed with the president.

The move will cost the exchequer Rs3 billion, but the minister’s words helped explain why the PPP parliamentarians supported a resolution sponsored by the rival PML-N in parliament on Thursday to withdraw hike in oil prices.

A government-sponsored housing scheme in major cities for employees and middle income class and agricultural loans for rural population would be some of the other popular schemes to be launched in the coming weeks, the minister said.

As part of housing schemes, the government servants would be offered plots, flats and houses on easy instalments. The governments of Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would be part and stakeholders of these schemes.

The common citizens would also be offered loans of Rs300,000 (the amount could be increased) for small businesses.

Directives to the Zarai Taraqiati Bank are being issued to revive lending that had been stopped last year.

The minister claimed that these initiatives would not only help garner public support but also trigger business activity and enhance GDP growth rate — averaging below 2.5 per cent in the last four years — and lead to job creation and poverty reduction.

He said while most of the state institutions remained engaged in a politico-legal controversy surrounding the ‘memo case’ and its aftermath, President Asif Ali Zardari had been busy fine-tuning the election strategy.

Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh and Water and Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar were called on Wednesday to reach Karachi for discussions on election preparations with the president.

Earlier on Jan 28, a meeting with the country’s leading currency dealers at the presidency was postponed at the eleventh hour for other pressing engagements. The stock exchange brokers considered an alternative source of fund-raising have already been taken care of through a recent amnesty scheme until 2014, envisaging no questions on source of income
and no tax increase earlier announced by the government.

In reply to a question, the minister said the powerful bureaucracy had already been offered historic benefits in the shape of multiple salary increases of about 100 per cent in four years, shareholding in state-owned companies in the form of Benazir Employees Stock Option Scheme and very recently introduced monetisation of transport facilities that not only
helped senior officers to own cars almost at throw-away prices and Rs70,000-Rs82,000 cash compensations.

Thousands of temporary government employees had been confirmed, he said.

When pointed out that these initiatives would fuel inflation and deteriorate fiscal deficit, the minister said monetisation of such steps would have a lag effect. The immediate concern of the PPP lawmakers was that they could face all sorts of criticisms but could no more afford public protests triggered by energy shortages and loadshedding, he added.

Asked about economic teams’ input, the minister said Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh had himself applied for a Senate ticket and was onboard the popular schemes. As far as Finance Secretary Dr Waqar Masood Khan, who is known for tight fiscal control, was concerned he could be given more important assignment of increasing revenues.