Fajar Rehman
The government claims it is serious about reform, yet seriousness can only be measured through actions rather than fresh rounds of diagnostics. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb told the Senate with confidence that the IMF Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment was initiated and facilitated by the government itself. But this does not answer the central question Pakistan has faced for decades: what happens after the report is placed on record, debated, and forgotten. Pakistan’s history is littered with assessments, inquiries, task forces, and blueprints. The problem has never been a shortage of findings — the problem is the chronic absence of follow-through.
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The minister is correct that the IMF’s diagnostic is not an externally imposed indictment. It was requested by Pakistan. Nearly 100 meetings were held, more than 30 institutions participated, and the assessment examined seven major governance areas. The minister described it as a technical evaluation rooted in decades-old structural weaknesses and emphasised that the Fund acknowledged recent progress. This openness to scrutiny matters. It suggests that the government is willing to face uncomfortable truths and shape an action plan it has promised to share publicly.
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However, Pakistan has heard this language before. Every administration has promised reform, organised consultations, briefed parliament, and unveiled ambitious frameworks. Yet outcomes have rarely matched the rhetoric. When the Senate is reminded that corruption continues to undermine development, this is not a revelation — it is a repetition of what has been documented for years. The danger now is that this diagnostic becomes another addition to the long shelf of reports confirming what everyone already knew while nothing substantive changes on the ground.
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The IMF also shares responsibility for this cycle. Pakistan has entered and exited IMF programmes for decades, each time with commitments, timelines, and assurances that “this time will be different.” Yet, the same governance failures have persisted. That is not a criticism of Pakistan alone; it also reflects on a lending institution that has repeatedly signed off on arrangements which failed to produce structural reforms. If the IMF now invests in a deep governance and corruption assessment, it cannot treat its findings as a purely academic exercise. It must ensure that its own recommendations are not softened, ignored, or delayed when they encounter entrenched interests.
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The Fund’s leverage is simple: tie future support to measurable reforms in governance — the very areas the report identifies as deficient. If that leverage is not used, Pakistan will experience yet another cycle of diagnosis without cure, and both the government and the IMF will be responsible for enabling the status quo. The public has little patience left for paper reforms, and the international community would be wrong to underestimate the political consequences of repeated failures.
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For the government, the real test is even sharper. Having proudly declared ownership of the diagnostic, it cannot later claim that reforms are being imposed from outside. Ownership implies accountability. An action plan that stays on paper, or that is reduced to cosmetic procedural tweaks, will only reinforce suspicions that the exercise was designed more for optics than structural change. Pakistanis have witnessed too many announcements, committees, and briefings to confuse activity with progress.
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What is needed now is a complete shift from description to implementation. The “structural deficiencies” highlighted by the IMF are not abstract phrases; they are the very rules, incentives, and administrative practices that have allowed corruption to embed itself within the state for generations. Reform demands legislative amendments, stronger enforcement capacity, empowered watchdogs, and protection for institutions that confront vested interests. It also requires public transparency so that parliament, civil society, and citizens can track whether the action plan is being executed or quietly shelved.
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Until there is visible, verifiable movement — prosecutions, regulatory reforms, procurement transparency, tax enforcement, public disclosure of decisions, and institutional restructuring — the rhetoric will remain hollow. A diagnostic, no matter how technically sound, cannot change outcomes on its own. The government has presented this assessment as a turning point, and the IMF has framed it as part of a deeper engagement. Both will now be judged on what happens next. Only sustained, measurable results can turn this from yet another report into the beginning of real systemic reform.
