Pakistan’s new finance minister is on a mission to fix his country. To many, it’s an unenviable task.
As a prominent banker and JPMorgan Chase & Co. alumnus, Aurangzeb comes as well equipped as any of his predecessors to face the challenge. But that’s to disregard an array of extra factors affecting the role, which are outside his control, including volatile domestic politics, tensions with neighbors India, Afghanistan and Iran, and a catastrophic position on the front line of climate change.
Aurangzeb cites a shared sense of urgency with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was elected to a second successive term in March. “He’s a person who wants to get things done,” he said of Sharif in an interview in his ministry in Islamabad. Hailing from a prominent family in Lahore—his father was Pakistan’s attorney general—Aurangzeb, 59, went to the nation’s elite Aitchison College then studied at Wharton on a scholarship before working at Citigroup Inc. in New York early in his career.
Aurangzeb would often speak about his love for the country of his birth and the elevation to finance minister is seen as evidence of his commitment to the nation, the person said, asking not to be named discussing personal decisions. What he describes as “national service” will mean reaching tough decisions under the toughest IMF program in years if he and Sharif are to bring the economy back from the brink. These include putting a stop to accumulating more state losses by raising energy prices and selling state-owned companies, unpopular choices that will inevitably trigger pushback from powerful business lobbies and stoke public anger—a chief reason they’ve been avoided to date.