HE`S talking about new beginnings, but the story he`s telling is an old one.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has been in Washington DC for the better part of the week, attending the IMF/World Bank annual meetings, and is telling everyone that Pakistan may have its fair share of problems, but work is being done to help fix things.

In the course of building his story, he lays blame on the previous government `for their neglect of the economy, and their misgovernance` and says his government `inherited a bankrupt treasury` `Difficult decisions will have to be made,` he argued in his talk at the Atlantic Council before listing some of the steps his government is committed to taking.

`The path forward is one of massive austerity,` he said, adding that his government intends to bring down the fiscal deficit from its last year`s closing of 8.8 per cent to 4 per cent. But this austerity will not harm growth. The story continues, because from the axe of adjustment will fall on current expenditures, he says, like subsidies, but other growth inducing expenditures will continue.

Fair enough, this is not thefirst time we are hearing the `depleted treasury` and the `tough decisions` speech.

These have been the opening lines of every new government for the past 25 years at least.

What reasons are there to believe this time things will work out differently, that the government will be able to hold on to the rope of reform through the political storms that are inevitably coming its way? The IMF finds solace in thefact that the government began its tenure by taking a number of very difficult decisions called `prior actions` in the parlance of the fund.

These included a hike in the GST rate, in the power tariffs and allowing the rupee to fall.

Butin each case, less than half a year following their enactment, the government`s resolve has faltered.

The power tariff hikes on business and industry remain in place, but the ones on domestic consumers were quickly and shambolically withdrawn in the face of a growing political backlash.

The documentation meas-ures contained in the budget have all been withdrawn via an SRO, an instrument that the government has promised it will abolish by December next year, but apparently intends to use to the hilt in the meantime.

The State Bank has indeed scaled back its interventions in the money markets to shore up the rupee, actions that consumed $3.5 billion of the country`s precious foreign exchange reserves last fiscal year. The result has been a large and continuing slide in the value of the rupee.

But others have argued that the drop in the value of the rupee has been fuelled as much by the large government borrowing from the State Bank which amounts to printing of currency to pay the government`s bills. In the closing days of the first quarter of this fiscal year, when the drop in the value of the rupee peaked, government borrowing from the State Bank also hit a peak beyond 800 billion rupees, although it has since been brought down to 523 billion in line with targets laid out in the IMF programme.

Referring to some of these reversals, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar at the Atlantic Council talk acknowledged the political difficulties involved, but said the government remains committed to the reform process even if the pace of the reforms has to accommodate political sensitivities.

`We are here to rule for five years,` he said. `There is no need to act in haste.

But in Washington DC, misgivings about Pakistan`s economy and its stability are everywhere. Even the IMF, in its own assessment of the programme, says `implementation risk is high` due to political factors and security reasons.

One indicator of the depth of the misgivings might be in the meeting schedule for the minister. In a four-day period, he is scheduled to hold 49 meetings, including long oneon ones with two officials at the US treasury, and one on ones with the MD, Deputy MD and division head of the IMF But there was only one public appearance, no opportunities to sit on any of the ubiguitous panels that will be discussing all sorts of issues like poverty alleviation or risks to growth in emerging markets from the difficulties of the advanced economies.

It seems the meeting organisers would prefer that the government of Pakistan restrict its focus to its domestic worries, and leave international concerns to others.

In a telling contrast, Pakistan`s public face at the gatherings will instead be MalalaYousufzai,whoreceived special mention in the President`s opening address, and will be a guest at a session on Friday.