Improving Economic Governance Chapter 18: Improving Economic Governance This chapter has four sections relating respectively on how to stop the‘boom and bust’ cycle to manipulation of statistics, improvement in statistics and problems with accuracy of projections. 18.1 Stopping the‘Boom and Bust’ Cycle This section highlights the‘boom and bust’ cycles that Pakistan has witnessed since the start of the 21 st century. This cyclical pattern is the consequence of a cycle of expansionary and growth promoting fiscal and monetary policies leading to higher growth and increasing strongly the demand for imports. This has led to a big rise in the current account deficit causing a precipitate decline in foreign exchange reserves. At this time, there has generally been resort to an IMF program of two to three years. Thereafter, recovery of reserves leads to a premature end of the program and a return back to expansionary policy measures. This cycle is presented in Chart 18.1. The expansionary and contractionary periods are identified below: Years 1999-2000 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 *Election Years Type of Growth Path IMF Program Contractionary Contractionary Expansionary Expansionary Expansionary Expansionary Expansionary Expansionary* IMF Program Contractionary Contractionary Years 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 *Election Years Type of Growth Path Expansionary Expansionary* IMF Program Contractionary Contractionary Expansionary Expansionary* IMF Program Contractionary Expansionary IMF Program IMF Program 183