Pakistan, April 10 -- We are at that point in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program that the government must now take some very difficult decisions in order to retain the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and keep the fiscal space that it so desperately needs. Surely it realised during the year or so in the wilderness - when the bailout program was suspended - that the country is just not in a position to try and survive on its own at the moment. Therefore, even though Prime Minister Imran Khan resisted all sorts of pressure to raise taxes and power tariffs for many months, he had to cave in eventually to get the tap to run again.

And now, with news headlines shouting about another Rs1.3 trillion hike in taxes committed to the IMF for...