THE government hit its midpoint stride with a budget that gives us schemes for the poor, incentives for the rich and a prayer for the country.

The allocations are ordinary, the ambitions are muted and the rhetoric is soaring. The finance minister claimed he has saved the country from default in his first year, stabilised the economy in the second year, and is now preparing to shift gears to move towards growth.

By the end of the next fiscal year, reserves will rise to $19bn and growth will come in at 5.1pc, a whole percentage point higher than where it is today. Further, investment will soar by three percentage points of GDP to touch 16.5pc. These are not small claims and all eyes are now on the details to see how this will be accomplished.

Also read: Ishaq Dar eyes 7pc growth by tenure end

The narrative is a pleasant one, but the road map on how the objectives laid down will be achieved is ambiguous. The government appears to be counting on a hike in development spending and investments under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to spur the national economy.

This may yet be viable, but the type of growth it is likely to yield will be narrowly based on brick and mortar industries, and very temporary in nature.

For growth to be inclusive and sustainable, domestic industry and agriculture need to be pulled out of the doldrums, and here we saw hardly anything more than a spattering of schemes and incentives and little by way of serious policy direction.

The budgetary numbers themselves reveal a fairly large hike in external receipts and FBR taxes. External loans are set to rise by more than Rs100bn, which fuels further questions about the manner in which the present stabilisation has been arranged.

Their midpoint narrative — from default to stabilisation to growth — is an elegant one indeed. But now the time has come to move beyond narratives towards outcomes. And here the questions linger.

The out-turn from last year is not as rosy as the minister has painted, and scepticism is thick in the air regarding next year’s claims. At least a part of this year’s growth appears to have come out of thin air.

Agriculture growth has relied heavily on livestock and dairy, sectors notoriously difficult to measure. Industrial growth appears to have soared in cotton ginning, again a notoriously difficult sector to measure, while spinning has shown negative growth, prompting questions about where all that ginned cotton went.

A narrative that is elegantly constructed when viewed from a distance is not enough. The government needs to communicate a more serious vision of how it intends to rectify the imbalances that are increasing within the economy even as growth admittedly sputters anew.

Rising borrowing, lagging revenues and skewed sectoral patterns of growth are poor foundations upon which to build inclusive and sustainable growth.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play