Somewhere in a brightly lit studio – location unknown, channel unidentified, date untraceable – a Pakistani news anchor recently discovered a shortcut to prosperity. Not through exports, innovation or painful reform. Not through productivity or fiscal discipline, but through data crunching.
If you add what is visible to what is invisible, she announced with admirable enthusiasm, Pakistan is not merely a $411 billion economy, but is practically a $1 trillion (one lakh crore dollar) colossus in waiting. All that is required is to count the undeclared wealth.
When arithmetic becomes alchemy
‘Our GDP came in at $411 billion, making Pakistan the world’s 40th largest economy,’ she declared. So far, so good. Then came the leap worthy of an Olympic gymnast. The undocumented economy, she explained, is larger than the documented one. Therefore, if one were to ‘give informal figures and estimate’, the real economy is nearing the $1 trillion mark.
It was less an economic projection and more an act of televised alchemy – turning invisible cash into visible grandeur.
Optimism costs nothing
It is a charming proposition. If half your wealth is hiding under the mattress, you are secretly a millionaire. If your neighbour owes you money he will never repay, you may as well add it to your net worth. And if the informal economy is large, why not assume it is gargantuan? After all, optimism costs nothing.
The exuberance was infectious. For a fleeting moment, one wondered whether she was unveiling a new economic doctrine – Shadow Keynesianism, perhaps – or suppressing laughter on what might secretly have been a comedy show.
Counting the zeros
Does she even know how many zeros there are in a trillion? It is not a magic number. It is a mind-boggling figure: 1,000,000,000,000. Twelve zeros. They do not appear merely because one wills them into existence on prime-time television.
There is also the small matter of context. A country that negotiates with global lending agencies, that counts on rollovers and friendly deposits, that tightens belts at the whisper of an IMF review – such a country does not casually vault into the trillion-dollar club because its undocumented shopkeepers might be wealthier than reported.
No pauper becomes a prince by wearing borrowed royal clothes. And no economy becomes a trillion-dollar titan with most of its liquidity courtesy of World Bank, IMF programmes, and benevolent, friendly countries.
Sunshine economics
Still, one must admire the spirit. In an era of dreary fiscal reports and cautious forecasts, here was a burst of televised sunshine. ‘Please pay your taxes and document everything so that our country progresses,’ the news anchor urged. A noble sentiment, even if wrapped in trillion-dollar notes.
Perhaps that was the true message. Not that Pakistan is already a trillion-dollar economy in disguise, but that it could aspire to be one – someday, with reform and documentation.
Until then, the trillion will remain what it currently is: a very large number with twelve uncompromising zeros, waiting patiently for reality to catch up.
