THE much-awaited IMF assessment of Pakistan`s governance and corruption landscape has triggered chatter on talk shows and social media. For a report that likely cost the country close to $10 million, it is a disappointment. The information and analysis it provides and the messages it conveys, could easily have been communicated in one-tenth of its length. What we have received instead is a long, self-righteous document whose 186 pages carry far more physical weight than the weight of any original insight or substance.

Much of it is dense verbiage and platitudes a superficial bureaucratic sputter being presented as a forensic investigation unearthing high crime. Embellished by loads of hearsay it is essentially a compendium of heavily padded restatement and recycling of issues, findings and diagnoses long known to Pakistanis and analysed to exhaustion in the media. There is plenty of development-speak and rhetorical flourish but little that deepens understanding, and even less that charts new, sharper directions and frameworks for reform.

The only quantitative metric offered to demonstrate the scale of corruption and which set off animated discussions in the media is the report`s sensational claim that NAB recovered Rs5.3 trillion in the last two years, equivalent to four per cent of GDP. No evidence, source, or methodology drawn on for verification seemingly accompanies this number in a report that sermonises transparency and accountability. In fact, NAB`s own website does not confirm it; instead, it cites a cumulative recovery of Rs6.7tr over its entire 25-year existence. Furthermore, the report does not provide a breakdown of this figure cash recovered, the paper valuations of public land reclaimed and the settlements reached. And it is silent on the number of corruption cases resolved or on the action taken against the perpetrators of the crimes.

The exaggerated `success` being implied would denote that NAB outperformed every other public institution, including the FBR to the point where, on the basis of `mobilising` the equivalent of 2pc of GDP annually, we could theoretically dispense with the services of FBR altogether. Yet, in the same breath, the report assails NAB for being seen as an instrument employed by successive governments to hound political opponents. The contradiction is glaring.The most serious shortcoming of the report is its failure to undertake a thoughtful examination of the policies that create incentives for malfeasance. While it correctly identifies institutional weaknesses in taxation, regulation, SOEs and anti-corruption enforcement, it falls short of confronting the more profound, challenging and uncomfortable question of why these institutions perform poorly. While targeting institutional inadequacies, regulatory gaps in oversight functions and uneven enforcement by those tasked with this mandate, it ignores the policy frameworks that furnish continuing openings for corruption.

Institutions do not become corrupt in a vacuum.

They are corrupted by the policy frameworks thatfacilitate discretion, arbitrary taxation, rent-laden exemptions, distortions and subsidies. By focusing narrowly on `institutional inadequacies` and regulatory lapses, the report sidesteps identification of the specific policy choices that create these openings and opportunities in the first place. It avoids probing these underlying distortions.

This omission is hardly accidental. It is for a good reason. Both domestic and external actors crafted the policies, systems and structures that created the incentives and opportunities for corruption underlying the governance failures of the institutions. And many of the very policies that have generated corruption-enabling distortions were either endorsed, incentivised or directly pushed by the IMF and its multilateral partners over decades.

The report chastises Pakistan`s opaque, excessively complex and distortionary tax regime yet conveniently forgets that its bizarre architecture was fabricated on the IMF`s watch and endorsed by it, supposedly its core competence: additional customs duties, regulatory duties, super tax, minimum tax, turnover tax, CVT, deemed incomeassessments, surcharges, levies and a labyrinth of withholding taxes with multiple rates. In several instances, the ad hoc and distortionary measures and instruments were forced upon the country by the IMF in its overriding quest to raise revenues, regardless of the economic cost to the country. The resulting mutilated structure violates the Fund`s own best-practice norms and global advice.

Therefore, a fundamental weakness in the report is the striking reluctance to admit the role of external agencies in the enduring governance and fiscal frameworks and agendas. It conveniently feigns ignorance of the role played by the IMF and multilaterals under the nearly $1 billion in policy-based loans for tax reforms, complete with extensive conditionalities and technical assistance, which contributed materially to shaping the very institutional structures and systems the IMF is now criticising. There is barely any critique of the distortionary policies repeatedly sanctioned through IMF and multilateral programmes and policy loans even though several members of the 15-person team that authored the report were involved in these interventions.

For example, it expediently overlooks the multilaterals` own contributions to the regulatory nightmare confronting businesses and the current dysfunction in the energy sector, and who complain about commitments not being honoured, yet see no contradiction in repeatedly lending to a spoilt child whose behaviour hasn`t changed. To sum up, the report sermonises governance while shirking in practice; sidestepping responsibility for the distortions these agencies, and especially the IMF, assisted in designing. This approach smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

Finally, the report dwells at length on the governance failures of previous governments, strikingly leaving untouched the present set-up`s feeble and compromised governance through law rather than under law (rule by law instead of rule of law), ad hoc regulations, opaque decision-making, arbitrary and poorly designed tax measures.

The IMF mentions `data cut-off dates`, but this explanation is unconvincing considering the declared sweep and ambition of the assessment.

This selective framing severe and rigorous on the past, but mute on the present dilutes its neutrality and diminishes its analytical credibility. • The writer is a former govemor of the State Bank of Pakistan.