THE Gul Plaza tragedy in Karachi last weekend provided the perfect metaphor and visual example of a lot of what weighs down Pakistan’s economy. This was not the first such fire. Journalist Mahim Maher compiled a list of 60 mall fires in Karachi between 2016 and 2022. “Gul Plaza was a disaster waiting to happen,” she said while re-sharing her interactive map of all these fires on her social media feed.
The massive flames engulfing the building were reminiscent of the inflationary fire that engulfed Pakistan between March 2021 and May 2023. The repeated nature of these fires was a parallel to how the economy of Pakistan burns in the fires of a balance-of-payments crisis every few years.
New reports talked about how the firefighters were late to the scene. Firefighters attributed this to the traffic mess through which their tenders had to travel to reach the scene. This reminded me of the intense power struggle that has been a constant feature of our politics for decades now, and how the political logjam serves as an obstruction in the path of decision-makers reaching the conclusion they need to reach: the country needs to go to the IMF and swallow the bitter medicine of austerity one more time to douse the economic flames engulfing the country.
The firefighters fought heroically. They fought all night. The smouldering remains of the building over the next few days bore testament to the strength they had to muster, the dangers they faced and all that it must have taken to douse the flames. It’s the same when respective governments have fought off a balance-of-payments crisis. The State Bank and the bureaucrats at the finance ministry make some of the toughest choices of their careers during these periods. The high-wire act performed to keep banks afloat in 2008 or to keep the energy supply chain running in 1998 is known only to those who actually performed these deeds. The rest of us may be oblivious to all that it took to keep the country running those days. But we are all in the debt of those who made sure this was the case.
The flames consuming Gul Plaza were reminiscent of the inflationary fire that engulfed the country between March 2021 and May 2023.
Yet the repeated fires in Karachi mock the efforts of the firefighters, just like the repeated slide into bankruptcy by Pakistan’s economy mocks the efforts of the heroes who had to pull it out of crises in the last episode of bankruptcy. Ms Maher counted 60 fires in six years. That is 10 every year. Yet after Gul Plaza the authorities are once again sending out notices to the Association of Builders and Developers (ABAD) in Karachi to please ensure their buildings have fire exits. I counted almost 25 episodes of bankruptcy for Pakistan since 1988. Yet after each programme ends, every government announces this is the last such programme.
The same mistakes are made over and over again. The same flames break out over and over again. The same drama plays out every such fire. And it always has the same ending: everyone gets back to business as usual, no lessons are ever learned, and certainly no lessons ever applied. Pakistan is one of a handful of countries that has spent more time inside an IMF programme than outside in the past quarter century or more. Yet, not once has there been an across-the-board exercise to determine why we keep falling into the same hole every few years, why we keep having to put out the same fire every few years.
The reason is simple. Nobody in Karachi, not least in all the administrations the city has had over the decades, is really interested in preventing the next fire. ABAD is not likely to do much to retrofit all buildings in the city that it has built with fire escape plans. According to DIG South, quoted in this paper, the building had 16 exits on the ground floor and 14 of them were closed, while the basement was packed with shoppers. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to know that blocked exits are a fire hazard, but who thinks of preventive maintenance? Who thinks about fire escapes and emergency evacuation plans in a city that literally lives from day to day?
Likewise, it doesn’t take a lot of brains to understand that if you burn your foreign currency reserves in a consumptive binge you will go bankrupt. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to realise that if you replenish these reserves with borrowed dollars, you will still go bankrupt but this time with more debt on top of it. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you keep doing what everybody before you did, you will land up in the same place as they all did: in bankruptcy, fighting the fires of inflation.
Yet they do it over and over again. The Gul Plaza fire was a massive tragedy. Even as the dead are still being counted and identified, it can be said the bigger tragedy will be when the fire is forgotten, when the furore dies down, when normality returns, and people get back to work once again. That is what happened 60 times between 2016 and 2022. It is now gearing up to happen for the 61st time.
And exactly the same thing happens with the economy. Every time they put out the fires of inflation, and every time they replenish the foreign currency reserves following a brush with bankruptcy, they spend a year extolling their heroism, reminding everyone how they just put out a fire started by the previous guys. Then they get to work doing the exact same thing the previous guys did, all the while reassuring us that this time the outcome will be different.
And because money gets made in these latter periods, nobody complains, except maybe naysaying doomsayers like yours truly. Until the next fire.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2026
