Pakistan is going through similar reforms India went through nearly 30 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Indian_economic_crisis
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The
1991 Indian economic crisis had its roots in 1985 when India began having
balance of payments problems as imports swelled, leaving the country in a
twin deficit: the Indian trade balance was in deficit at a time when the government was running on a large fiscal deficit. By the end of 1990 in the run-up to the
Gulf War,
the situation became so serious that the Indian foreign exchange reserves could barely finance three weeks’ worth of imports while the government came close to defaulting on its financial obligations. By July that year,
the low reserves had led to a sharp devaluation of the rupee, which in turn exacerbated the twin deficit problem. Chandrasekhar government could not pass the budget in February 1991 at a crucial time when
Moody had downgraded India and it further went down after the budget was not passed and global credit-rating agencies further downgraded India from investment grade making it impossible to even get short term loans and the government was in no position to give any commitment to reform the economy.
The World Bank and IMF also stopped their assistance, leaving the government with no option except mortgaging the country's gold to avoid defaulting on payments.
This led the Indian government to airlift national gold reserves as a pledge to a large conditional bail out from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in exchange for a loan to cover balance of payment debts.
The crisis led to the
liberalisation of the Indian economy, as one of the conditions stipulated in the World Bank loan (structural reform), requiring India to open itself up to participation from foreign entities in its industries, including state owned enterprises."