Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb says protests could cost the economy Rs120 billion a day (Express Tribune).
The breakdown
| Sector | Daily loss | |—|—| | Services | Rs86bn — financial services, communications, transport, retail, wholesale, hospitality | | Industry | Rs25bn — construction, finished goods, raw materials, supply chains | | Agriculture | Rs9bn — transport, perishables, dairy, trade | | Total | Rs120bn | | Government revenue forgone | Rs17bn |
The estimates were derived with the Planning Commission’s economic wing. He spoke in a recorded television message on Sunday.
What he said
“If this economic stabilisation that we have achieved with great effort, difficult decisions and continuous efforts is disrupted by protests, sit-ins, road blockages and the closure of business and economic activities, what would the results be?”
“This would be self-inflicted pain.”
He named Jamaat-i-Islami, Kissan Ittehad and PTI.
How to read a figure like this
It is a gross estimate of activity foregone on a day of total shutdown, not a measure of permanent loss. Much economic activity interrupted for a day is deferred rather than destroyed — a delivery made on Tuesday instead of Monday, a purchase postponed.
The genuinely lost portion is real but smaller: perishables that spoil, shifts not worked, tourism and hospitality that cannot be made up, and contracts missed.
So Rs120bn a day is the right order of magnitude for what stops, and an overstatement of what is lost. The reporting does not say which the ministry means.
The part the figure does not address
Much of what will stop this week has been stopped by the government, not the marchers. Rawalpindi’s transport terminals, Metro Bus, markets, schools and universities have been closed by administrative order; eight entry points are sealed with spiked containers; mobile internet is to be suspended.
A minister costing the disruption at Rs120bn a day is costing an outcome his own administration is substantially producing in advance of the event.
That does not make the protests costless. It does mean the bill cannot be presented to one side only.
The thing being protested
The petroleum levy, at Rs80 a litre. Jamaat-i-Islami puts annual collection at Rs1,567 billion — which, on the government’s own daily figure, is about thirteen days of national economic activity.
What is not established
The methodology behind the Rs120bn estimate has not been published, nor whether it measures gross activity or net loss. No estimate has been offered for the cost of the administrative closures themselves.
[Image: Screengrab via The Express Tribune]
