Inaugural Address

It is a real privilege to be in the midst of such an augustgathering for the fourth time in six years. Last night as I waspreparing my remarks to come here I could not help but think about myfirst interaction in this very hotel in Islamabad six years ago. It wasthe 15th AGM of PSDE where in November 1999, I had been in the officefor a few weeks, I took this opportunity to present a road map to thisvery audience. We have come a long way since November 1999. As Ireflected last night, six years ago it was a very daunting, exciting anda very stimulating thought process. Six years ago the country was facedwith many challenges. Today, we are also faced with challenges butdifferent challenges. Six years ago we were in crisis management ratherthen economic management. Today we are in a different plane and headingtowards a different destination. In my remarks six years ago I talkedabout the need for good governance, the need for structural reforms andthe need for raising the quality of people we have engaged, i.e.,increasing the human capital of the country and improving it. I do notwant to spend too much time on where we were six years ago except to saythat the country was in a debt trap, and we were living from crisis tocrisis. We were in a balance of payment situation where the situationwas precarious, our credit rating was off the charts, creditors werechasing us to be paid. I remember entering the MoF office every morningand suppliers, mostly foreigners, chasing us as to when we will be paid.So we were in technical default and so on and so forth. The fundprogramme was going from tranche to tranche. Why did a sovereign stateof 150 million people end up the way it did six years ago and we stillhave a lot of work to do. We also had issues like IPP’s impacting theinvestment climate in the country. We had a lot of litigation going as aresult the deficits were huge and growing. Overall situation lookchallenging. At that time I had talked about the need forreforms.