‘Why wait if you know the answer?’

Let us believe for a moment that the majority of reforms included in the Economic Reform Programme, and approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are actually home grown, produced by our ministers and other government officials, and adopted by the IMF. 

Why, then, did the government wait until such local ideas and reforms had to come as conditions from the IMF?

Likewise, if the Egyptian economic reform programme is a product of the Egyptian government, and the IMF role was confined to follow up implementation and provide financial support, as official media claim, why did Egypt wait until the fund was called upon as a saviour?

The governments of Jordan and Egypt are not short of ideas of their own, but they are unable to put these ideas to work, waiting that they come as IMF conditions.

In other words, the fund is used as a shield to protect governments form local objections and criticism.

If not implemented on time, economic reform will become a more difficult and far-reaching operation that can be conducted only by officials who enjoy high credibility, legitimacy and a lot of political capital, qualities which appear to be lacking.

In our recent experiment, the team of economic ministers went to the newly formed Council of Economic Policies and laid their ideas and suggestions, which were accepted by the council and issued as recommendations.

The Council of Ministers did not wait to declare its undertaking to carry out all the council’s recommendations.

The government was, of course, able to go ahead and implement its own suggestions, but going through the council can spare it the political cost, which will be shouldered by the council.

Another example: the prime minister defended the idea of pricing electricity in a way to recover the cost of production, based on the changing world prices of oil and gas, in the same way local prices of fuel are priced on monthly bases to eliminate the costly subsidy.

The government told us that it will not carry out this idea before the beginning of next year.

If this flexible way of electricity pricing is the right thing to do, then why should it not be done now? Why wait for six months and accumulate more loses?

Ideas, recommendations and reform measures are not absolute facts. They are attempts to choose a course of action form among several possible courses.

Only free dialogue and discussions can reveal what is best.

Here, those qualified to discuss and evaluate the recommendations find themselves in a dilemma: those who strongly support the recommendations are accused of flattery and trying to please, and those who point out the downside of the move are accused of being spoilers.

When it comes to economic reform, time is of the essence. It is like a sword you either control or let it kill you.

The passage of time makes problems worse and more difficult to deal with.

Those responsible for good governance must benefit from the ideas of those who oppose as much as they benefit from the ideas of those who support its decisions.