THIS refers to the article ‘Petrol subsidy’ (June 4) by a researcher working with the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) who built the case on the premise that the removal of the petroleum subsidy, an existential crisis for the Pakistani economy, was not necessary.

This was based on the calculation that a salary cut of one day of “the civilian federal government employees” would fund an entire month’s petroleum subsidy.

When someone subsequently pointed out that the calculation was off by a thousand times because the subsidy had been assumed to be Rs150 million when it actually was Rs150 billion, the author issued a note on the Dawn website to the effect that “the error was regretted”, but that “the argument itself still stands — that one day’s salary of the employees of the entire labour force in the formal sector would help cover a significant part of the petrol subsidy”.

Readers were left to wonder for themselves how, with the error corrected, one day’s salary of the civilian federal government would help cover anything other than optics. With the right numbers, it would take six months’ salaries of the entire “civilian federal government” workforce to pay for one month of petroleum subsidy. One day’s pay would only make a 0.55 per cent dent in the subsidy; a drop in the ocean of required petroleum.

An apt way to explain the difference in quantum between a million and a billion is by example. A million minutes ago, Gulzar Ahmed was the chief justice of Pakistan. A billion minutes ago, the Romans were building the Colosseum! Two million minutes ago, Saqib Nisar thought he could crowdfund a dam of which Rs1,800 billion was the non-inflation-adjusted estimated cost. With every department ‘voluntarily’ donating salaries, with a billion rupees given by Pakistan Army alone, he made it to Rs10 billion; 0.55pc of the supposed target.

Murad Saeed famously promised us that Imran Khan would bring $200 billion of looted wealth from abroad and would then proceed to have all of our debt paid off. This figure first appeared in a speech in parliament given by Ishaq Dar. After some digging revealed a misplaced decimal point, the actual estimate of Pakistani money in Swiss banks turned out to be $2 billion.

And even that could not be brought back.

Abdul Moiz Jaferii
Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2022