The years 2024 and 2025 will be remembered as one of the darkest economic periods in Pakistan’s modern history.Under the banners of “economic stabilization,” “IMF reforms,” and “fiscal discipline,” the government imposed unprecedented taxes, petroleum levies, electricity tariffs, and indirect taxation on ordinary citizens. What was presented as economic management has, in reality, become a systematic transfer of wealth from the poor to the ruling elite.
The most shocking example is the collection of nearly Rs. 2.59 trillion through petroleum levy in just two years. This historic extraction from the pockets of citizens was not accompanied by any visible relief for the people. Instead of reducing inflation, improving public transport, subsidizing fuel, strengthening healthcare, or investing in education, the burden on citizens only intensified. The fundamental question remains unanswered: where did this enormous public money go?
Pakistan’s poor and middle classes are being crushed under a ruthless cycle of inflation. Petrol prices continue to rise, electricity bills have become unbearable, gas tariffs are beyond the reach of ordinary households, and food inflation has destroyed the purchasing power of millions.
A salaried individual who could barely survive in 2022 now finds himself unable to provide basic necessities for his family. The working class is skipping meals, small businesses are collapsing, and white-collar professionals are rapidly falling below the poverty line.
Independent economic indicators and international financial institutions have repeatedly warned about the alarming decline in Pakistan’s purchasing power. Inflation has eaten away incomes at a devastating pace. Essential commodities such as flour, sugar, cooking oil, milk, pulses, medicines, and transport have witnessed record increases.
In many households, meat has disappeared entirely from monthly consumption. Families that once considered themselves middle class are now dependent on loans, charity, or remittances to survive.
The tragedy is not merely inflation itself it is the injustice behind it.
The burden of the state is being imposed almost entirely on ordinary citizens, while the wealthy elite continues to enjoy immunity. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), despite consuming billions in salaries, perks, luxury vehicles, foreign trainings, and bureaucratic privileges, has failed to expand the tax net toward the real centers of wealth and power.
Instead of targeting untaxed sectors worth trillions, successive governments continue squeezing the documented and vulnerable classes. Daily wage laborers, small shopkeepers, salaried employees, and consumers pay indirect taxes on nearly everything they use. Meanwhile, untaxed palaces, luxury farmhouses, housing empires, speculative real estate wealth, and politically connected businesses remain largely untouched.
Pakistan’s taxation system has effectively become anti-poor and anti-middle class. The rich become richer through tax exemptions, subsidies, dollar-linked profits, and policy manipulation, while the poor finance the state through inflated utility bills and indirect taxation. This is not economic reform it is economic exploitation.
The government justifies these policies in the name of IMF conditions. However, the truth is that IMF agreements alone are not responsible for public suffering. The real problem lies in the state’s unwillingness to implement genuine structural accountability.
If Pakistan honestly taxed powerful industrial cartels, real estate mafias, large agricultural estates, untaxed retailers, and politically protected wealth holders, the country would not need to continuously burden the poor with petroleum levies and indirect taxes.
This is precisely why the proposal advocated by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari regarding greater provincial authority in tax collection deserves serious national debate. Decentralized tax administration could reduce corruption, improve efficiency, and weaken the monopoly of a deeply dysfunctional federal taxation structure.Unfortunately, entrenched interests resist every reform that threatens elite privilege.
At the same time, the state continues extravagant spending patterns that insult public suffering. Luxurious government protocols, unnecessary foreign tours, elite bureaucratic benefits, massive security expenditures for rulers, and wasteful administrative structures continue uninterrupted while citizens are told to “sacrifice for the country.” The reality is that the sacrifices are being demanded only from the poor.
Pakistan today faces a dangerous social and economic imbalance. Poverty is expanding rapidly. Unemployment is rising. Young graduates cannot find jobs. Small industries are shutting down because of unbearable electricity costs. Farmers are unable to afford fertilizer, diesel, and seeds.
The urban middle class historically the backbone of stability is collapsing under inflationary pressure.
The decline in purchasing power is now visible everywhere:Families are reducing food intake.Parents are withdrawing children from private schools.Patients are delaying medical treatment because medicines are unaffordable.
Utility bills are consuming entire monthly salaries.Millions are trapped in debt merely to survive.This economic suffocation is creating deep anger across society. Citizens no longer believe that the burden is being shared equally. They see a system where ordinary people are taxed aggressively while politically connected elites continue accumulating wealth without accountability.
The crisis is not due to a lack of resources. Pakistan is a country rich in agriculture, minerals, manpower, industry, ports, and strategic geography. The real crisis is governance, corruption, elite capture, and economic injustice. A fair taxation system, transparent accountability, and investment in productive sectors could transform Pakistan’s future.
If genuine reforms were implemented;Electricity prices could be reduced.Petroleum relief could be provided.Public healthcare and education could improve.External debt dependence could decline.
Employment opportunities could expand.Inflationary pressure could ease significantly.But such reforms require political courage and courage is rare in a system dominated by dynastic privilege, corruption networks, and economic mafias.
Today, the people of Pakistan are asking a simple but powerful question:Why must 250 million citizens suffer so that a small ruling elite can continue living in luxury?How long will the poor finance the state while the powerful remain untouchable?How long will petroleum levies, indirect taxes, and inflation be used as tools to extract wealth from struggling families?And how long will national policies continue serving elite interests instead of public welfare?
The Pakistani nation is no longer silent. Public awareness is growing. Citizens increasingly understand that the country’s destruction is rooted not merely in economic weakness, but in a deeply unequal and exploitative system designed to protect privilege at the cost of the masses.
Pakistan does not belong to a handful of ruling families, bureaucratic elites, or untouchable cartels. It belongs to 250 million people who deserve justice, dignity, economic freedom, and a future where survival itself is not a daily battle.
Opinion by : Dr. Rizwan Bhayo, Lahore I May 13, 2026
