Borrowing or Selling Assets: A Cycle That Risks Repeating the Crisis

There is little space left for incremental policy responses. The familiar toolkit—borrowing or selling state assets—has reached its limits. What once served as a means of “buying time” now risks becoming part of the very cycle that perpetuates the crisis. What is required instead is a direct reckoning with its structural roots, rather than continued focus on surface symptoms.

Growth remains below what is needed, and the economy has yet to generate sufficient, sustainable drivers of expansion. At the same time, obligations continue to mount, widening the gap between what the country needs and what it produces.

Compounding the problem is a distortion of the public narrative. Attention has increasingly shifted towards actors outside the decision-making process, particularly ordinary citizens, who are asked to bear additional burdens as though they were responsible for policy choices in which they had no role. This kind of discourse offers no solutions. It clouds the debate, pulling focus away from real engines of growth and towards misplaced blame—wasting time without addressing the problem.

What is needed is a shift in logic: away from treating facilitation as a constraint, and towards using it as a tool to enable investment. When public discourse is distorted, economic messaging becomes a source of confusion rather than clarity.

The turning point begins with a simple question: how can a steady and sustained flow of money be ensured?

This is not rhetorical. It reframes the economic debate itself. For too long, policy discussions have been dominated by short-term fixes, trapped in a familiar cycle: the increasingly exhausted choice between borrowing and asset sales. But the situation has moved beyond merely “buying time.” What is now required is to move beyond it by addressing the underlying drivers of instability.

At the same time, growth remains insufficient. The economy has yet to generate sustainable sources of expansion to meet rising pressures, even as obligations mount and the gap between what is needed and what is produced continues to widen.

At its core, the challenge is no longer simply one of resource constraints. It is increasingly tied to how the problem is approached and managed.

For years, economic policy has been guided by a single operational logic: the pursuit of liquidity to manage recurring pressures as they arise. While this approach may provide temporary relief, it also entrenches a vicious cycle—returning again and again to the same starting point without creating a durable path forward.

The pattern is familiar: maturing obligations, a financing gap, pressure on the currency, and an urgent search for a solution. From there, the same question follows: Where do we get money?

The question itself is valid. The problem is that it has become the dominant, and often the only, lens through which decisions are made. Over time, it has shifted from being one tool among many to the central driver of policy, narrowing space for deeper, structural thinking about how the economy functions and evolves.

When the focus is reduced to “covering immediate obligations,” the range of options becomes equally narrow: more borrowing, asset sales, increasing burdens, or some combination of the three.

The result is an economic model driven by reaction rather than direction—one that responds to pressure as it emerges instead of setting a clear trajectory for growth and development.

Breaking out of this pattern begins with a deceptively simple step: changing the question. Replace “where can we get money quickly?” with “how can we generate money continuously?”

This is more than a semantic difference. The first seeks a temporary fix; the second implies building a system capable of sustaining itself over time.

Economies dependent on episodic liquidity require constant intervention. By contrast, those built on sustained financial flows are better equipped to absorb shocks and restore equilibrium gradually.

Such flows depend on stable sources of income—production, exports, services, and genuine investment—each forms a broader foundation for resilience and reduces reliance on emergency measures.

Reaching that stage, however, does not begin with industrial expansion or export targets alone. It starts with something more fundamental, and more difficult: changing the language that frames the economic debate.

As long as the narrative remains centred on burdens, pressure, and endurance, policymaking will continue to follow the same pattern—managing constraints rather than expanding possibilities. But when the focus shifts towards enabling investment, expanding opportunity, and providing facilitation, the direction of policy begins to change.

From here, a more pragmatic approach comes into focus: moving away from a logic centred on shifting and accumulating burdens, towards a framework built on mutual gains, while still delivering results that can be implemented in the near term.

This is not an abstract proposition. It is a practical one: creating space for each stakeholder to act, contribute, and adjust—rather than concentrating pressure on any single part of the system.