We Don’t Need the IMF. We Need Discipline.

July 16, 2026 (MLN): Pakistan has gone to the IMF twenty-four times. That number alone should force us to pause. It tells us that our problem is not the IMF, nor the global economy, nor some recurring external shock.

Our problem is discipline — or more precisely, the inability to sustain discipline long enough for reforms to take root. Every few years, we find ourselves in the same place: reserves depleted, confidence shaken, a new government stepping in, and a familiar declaration that “this will be the last IMF program.”

And for a while, it even looks true. The first two to two-and-a-half years of every program are almost identical: tough decisions, painful adjustments, and a genuine attempt to stabilize the economy.

But then the political calendar arrives.

As elections draw closer, the incentives shift. The pressure to show quick results becomes overwhelming. Inflation must fall. Growth must rise. The rupee must look stable. Fuel and electricity must feel affordable.

And to create these optics, governments reach for the same tools: subsidies, currency manipulation, fiscal expansion, and the reversal of hard-won reforms. The discipline that held for two years collapses in the last eighteen months. The IMF program derails. The crisis returns. And the next government begins the cycle again.

This is not an economic failure alone. It is a political-economic synchronization problem. Our economic cycle is hostage to our election cycle. And until we break that link, no IMF program — no matter how well designed — can succeed.

There are countries that faced crises far deeper than ours and still broke out of the IMF loop. South Korea in 1997 is the clearest example. When its financial system collapsed, Korea did not treat the IMF program as a temporary painkiller. It treated it as a launchpad. Interest rates were raised sharply.

The currency was allowed to float freely. Insolvent banks were shut down. Chaebols were forced to restructure. Financial regulation was rebuilt from the ground up. And most importantly, Korea stayed disciplined even after the IMF left. The reforms continued for years. The political system did not reverse them. And within a decade, Korea emerged as one of the world’s most resilient economies.

Indonesia’s story is even more dramatic. The Asian Financial Crisis triggered political upheaval, riots, and the fall of Suharto’s regime. Yet Indonesia did something Pakistan has never done: it implemented painful reforms even when they were politically suicidal. Banks owned by powerful elites were shut down.

Subsidies were removed despite public anger. The rupiah was allowed to find its true value. Corporate governance was overhauled. And Indonesia stayed disciplined for nearly ten years after the IMF program ended. Today, it is a stable emerging market that has not returned to the IMF since.

These countries did not escape the IMF because they were lucky. They escaped because they stayed disciplined beyond the IMF cycle.

Pakistan, on the other hand, belongs to a cluster of countries that behave exactly as we do: Argentina, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Kenya. Their structural DNA matches ours — weak tax bases, subsidy addiction, elite capture, political instability, and reform reversals driven by election pressure. They too treat IMF programs as temporary painkillers. They too abandon discipline when politics intensifies. And they too return to the IMF again and again.

So, the question is simple: if the problem is discipline, how do we create it?

The answer is not to remove democracy. The answer is to remove economic management from the short-term pressures of democratic politics. Pakistan needs a long-term, rules-based economic framework that continues across governments, across elections, and across political cycles. Economic policy must be insulated from the incentives that push every government toward populism in its final years.

This requires architecture, not promises. A technocratic Economic Stability Council with a fixed eight-year term. An independent central bank that cannot be pressured into monetary financing or artificial rupee stabilization. Fiscal rules that limit deficits, control debt, and prevent pre-election spending sprees.

Depoliticized energy pricing with targeted subsidies only. And institutional protection — not for control, but for continuity — so that no government can dismantle the framework for short-term gain.

This is not about supremacy. It is about influence. It is about using institutional strength to protect economic rules, not to run the economy. It is about shifting from direct control to long-term stability.

Pakistan does not need fewer IMF programs. Pakistan needs one final IMF program — followed by ten years of uninterrupted discipline. South Korea did it. Indonesia did it. We can too. But only if we stop treating IMF as a reset button and start treating discipline as the cure.

We don’t need the IMF. We need discipline.

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