Business Recorder Editorials 16th September 2026

The cost of revolving-door bureaucracy

EDITORIAL: The appointment of Pakistan’s seventh federal health secretary in 18 months should not be viewed as another routine bureaucratic reshuffle. It is symptomatic of a much larger problem: the state’s inability to provide its senior officials with the continuity needed to understand problems, formulate policy and see reforms through. If this is how officialdom is expected to function, there is little reason to expect effective policymaking or consistent implementation.

The latest incumbent, Dr Fakhre Alam has been given charge for three months, with the notification reportedly making clear that he can be removed even earlier. He follows a remarkably rapid succession of officials: Nadeem Mahboob, Nasiruddin Mashood, Waqarul Hasan, Hamed Yaqoob, Aslam Ghauri and Captain Mahmood, each of whom did not remain in position for long.

This problem, which effectively amounts to ad hoc governance, extends beyond the health ministry. Across Pakistan’s bureaucracy, officials are routinely transferred or replaced before they have had time to properly understand the institutions they are meant to run.

A new secretary arrives, spends months familiarising himself with the ministry, its personnel and problems, consults stakeholders and perhaps begins shaping a reform agenda, only to be moved elsewhere. His successor then starts the process afresh. Such a system is tantamount to maladministration because a vital ingredient of good governance, i.e., institutional memory, is continually eroded.

Complex problems cannot be understood through briefings alone; they require sustained engagement, detailed consultation, and an appreciation of what has been tried, why it succeeded or failed, and what needs to change. Frequent turnover discourages such long-term thinking.

An official whose tenure may end within months has little incentive to invest in reforms whose results may take years to materialise.

Foreign diplomats have also privately complained about the issue of bureaucratic churn, pointing to the futility of spending months developing an understanding with a particular secretary, only to find that the official has been transferred and the entire process of engagement must begin again. Such instability weakens the state’s capacity to engage coherently with its own citizens, and with foreign governments and institutions.

The health sector provides an especially worrying example because the consequences of administrative weaknesses can be immediate and serious. One wonders, for instance, whether the culture of short-term appointments had any bearing on the circumstances surrounding the tragic fire at PIMS. It would be neither fair nor accurate to attribute the gross incompetence demonstrated there solely to the frequent changes of health secretaries.

Yet it is legitimate to ask whether a secretary with a longer tenure, deeper institutional knowledge and a better grasp of the problems confronting establishments under the federal health ministry might have been better placed to identify vulnerabilities and demand timely corrective action.

The health minister, it should be acknowledged, does not have the authority to appoint officers in BPS-20 and above, with a senior ministry official revealing that two secretaries were removed during high-level meetings not chaired by him.

The minister therefore cannot fairly be blamed for this revolving door. Nevertheless, one does wonder whether he has raised the need for continuity within the cabinet and with the bureaucracy as forcefully as he does on various other issues.

Ministers may not make these appointments, but they can insist that constant disruption is damaging the institutions they are responsible for overseeing. Pakistan cannot build effective institutions if its bureaucracy is perpetually starting over.

Stability is not a luxury for government officials. It is a prerequisite for institutional memory, expertise, accountability and meaningful reform. A system that continually reinforces short-term thinking should not be surprised when it produces little work of long-term value.

Holding policy rate: the right decision

EDITORIAL: The Monetary Policy Committee kept the policy rate unchanged at 11.5 percent which must be supported.

Any increase in the rate would have made borrowing costs for the government (the single largest borrower) as well as the private sector prohibitively expensive that, in turn, would have impacted negatively on the growth rate.

And a decline would have been opposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which on 20 May at the conclusion of the third quarterly review mission argued that the “State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reiterated its commitment to maintaining an appropriately tight monetary policy stance to anchor inflation expectations and will continue to closely monitor potential second-round effects from energy price increases.”

Inflation expectations are rising globally due to the ongoing and widening Middle East conflict as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

However, it is relevant to note that the primary objective of the State Bank of Pakistan is to achieve and maintain domestic price stability, set out in Section 4 B of the SBPO Act 1956 (as amended up to January 2022 – an amendment, which was an IMF tranche release condition that sought to make the apex bank and its senior officials independent of any influence from the executive branch of government).

SBP’s website clarifies that “price stability means the maintenance of low and stable inflation guided by the government’s medium term inflation target,” and in this context it is relevant to note that this target range of between 5 to 7 percent has not wavered in most of the past year’s monetary policy statements (MPS).

It is therefore no surprise that the 14 September MPS maintains that “on balance, the inflation outlook for FY27 remains broadly unchanged from the previous assessment, and inflation is expected to gradually ease towards the upper bound of 5-7 percent target range by June 2027, though risks to the outlook have increased significantly.” The risks itemised include “volatility in global commodity prices, magnitude of adjustments in electricity and gas tariffs, supply disruptions, and unexpected movements in food prices amidst the worsening El Nino conditions.”

Be that as it may, there are concerns that the IMF mission, scheduled to arrive on 23rd of this month for the fourth quarterly review whose success would trigger the next tranche release, may insist on a rise in the policy rate if geopolitics continue to impact negatively on fuel prices. And, for a country like Pakistan that is currently on a harsh upfront Fund programme with as noted in the MPS “second round effects from energy price increases” this may imply inflation rising at a faster rate than in other countries.

The rate of inflation in regional countries is less than in Pakistan with the August rate in India of 4.82 percent, in Bangladesh at 8.2 percent, in Sri Lanka 8 percent, and China at 0.8 percent – a rate reflective of their respective state of economies.

In Pakistan, however, the Consumer Price Index rose from 9.2 percent in July to 11.1 percent in August – a rise of 1.9 percent. It is relevant to note that the policy rate was raised on 27 April by 100 basis points (from 10.5 percent) as inflation rose from 10.9 percent in April to 11.7 percent in May or by 0.8 percent. Today inflation is rising daily mainly attributable to the government’s decision to adjust the prices of petroleum products every 24 hours since 17 July – a decision reflecting the fluctuations in the international market.

And finally, the next MPC is scheduled to meet on 26 October and one would, therefore, hope that inflation declines as the geopolitical factors are no longer relevant that would enable the MPC to reduce the policy rate - a pro-growth initiative.