Trapped in a ‘catch-22’ economic situation
It is peaking in Pakistan. And there has been no full-blown lockdown as such since the Covid-19 curve started taking a steep trajectory at a relatively faster rate some two…
Pandemic and a difficult economic situation of developing countries
‘Developing countries have been ravaged by a combination of the pandemic-driven health crisis, collapsing exports, rising global food prices, domestic economic contraction, falling fiscal revenues, and external debt overhang. The…
Tax and the macroeconomic situation
We only raise about 8-9 percent of our GDP as tax. This is definitely not enough for the government, to sustain all the expenditures that we, as a society, want…
Withering geoeconomics
IT was almost exactly three years ago that a paper was published by Moeed Yusuf and his co-author Rabia Akhtar arguing in favour of a pivot away from geopolitics towards geoeconomics as…
Monetary policy and economic ground realities
In its most recent monetary policy statement (MPS), released on September 16 by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the policy rate has been kept unchanged at 11 percent due to…
‘Economic Resilience Act’—I
‘A resilient society is able to react to and respond after a shock. Resilience even opens new doors to enhanced growth and sustainability. …The concept of resilience can also be…
Resetting economic governance
We have lost count of experiments conducted to resolve challenges confronted by our economy. However, except interludes of relative stability, the economy has kept faltering with breathing space provided by…
Austerity, current account surplus, & economic resilience
Recently, the Prime Minister reportedly lauded economic performance with regard to country achieving current account surplus. In a developing country, which is facing gross external financing requirements on average of…
Economic realities and export
While macroeconomic indicators have achieved feeble stability over the past year, on-the-ground conditions remain as hopeless as they were a year ago. There’s abundant rhetoric about increasing exports, but it’s…
Russia’s clampdown on Tajik migrants raises economic and security risks
When Abubakr Yusufi boarded a flight to Moscow in July, he thought he wouldn’t be home for years. The 23-year-old from a small village in Tajikistan hoped to join his…
