| On behalf of the Investment Banks Association, of which I happen to be the current President, I would like to compliment the management of Investment and Marketing magazine for their initiative in organising this timely seminar on `Savings and Investment'. |
| I am particularly grateful to Professor Hassan for his kind invitation to speak at this concluding session. The previous sessions have covered such diverse areas as Economic Policies and their impact, the role of the Capital Market in attracting investment, and the role of Special Savings & Investment products. In this session I propose to talk on the `Role of Financial Institutions in encouraging Savings and Investment’. I will deal with the institutional aspect. |
| What I will not do is to discuss theories on how savings and investment can be promoted. Anyone who wishes to learn about that can go to any public library (if there are any left) and borrow the relevant books (if there are any left). In a sense, books today are as rare and as precious as savings. Those who possess them do not wish to part with them, and those who do not have them are ignorant of their benefits or the uses to which they can be put. |
| I would like to confine my observations this afternoon to our local condition, to the present lamentable situation into which we have voluntarily, knowingly, and consciously lowered ourselves. I know I am not exaggerating when I say that we are close to the bottom – not quite at the bottom but very close to it - of an abyss of financial insolvency. We owe more than $ 30 billion in foreign debts. We owe more than 1 trillion rupees in domestic debt. We need to borrow continuously simply to repay interest periodically. |
| Had we as a nation been a body corporate, we would have found our names on the CIB list of the State Bank of Pakistan, and been barred from incurring further indebtedness. Had we been a single borrower, we would have been arrested as defaulters and found ourselves in jail. As a sovereign nation of 140 million individuals, we stand indicted by our negligence not only for living beyond our means but for our chronic inability to manage ourselves – economically, socially and politically. |
| It is time we stopped deluding ourselves anymore. Let us muster the courage to ask questions – of ourselves, and of each other – questions which we may not wish to answer but which need to be answered, because there is no time left for furtive evasions. Half-truths and demi-lies are a poor substitute for rational planning and financial self-discipline. |
| Today, more so than at any time in our nation’s short history, we have done what no modern nation – whether large or small – can afford. We have managed to diminish our own credibility – at home and abroad. Whatever may be the present artificial rate of exchange of our rupee vis-a-vis other currencies, we have devalued our reputation in the eyes of the world. We have demonetised our coinage until it has become what it was many, many years earlier, before 1947. It has once again become one of brass. |
| This seminar is not the place to analyse where we went wrong over the past half century, or why. The inescapable truth is that we have been wrong and must now face the consequences of our deliberate and willful imprudence. [EXTRACT] |
| The full text has been published in THE BARK OF A PEN (2001) |
