IMF report: light on substance
THE much-awaited IMF assessment of Pakistan’s governance and corruption landscape has triggered chatter on talk shows and social media. For a report that likely cost the country close to $10 million, it…
Promise and peril of low policy rates
In an unprecedented policy action that has taken international markets and other domestic players by surprise, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has carried one of the most aggressive interest…
Discount rate as a policy tool
Economic stability has been achieved, and the country will not be deterred from implementing the reform agenda agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – a claim that has repeatedly…
3 policy decisions in the dock
Three news items this week past should be a source of serious concern to the country’s stakeholders: SBP’s decision to purchase USD 8 billion from the open market to shore…
Policy issues in the EFF programme — III
Covid-19 pandemic, and then the catastrophic floods in 2022, both of which had significant climate change causality – towards which Pakistan has contributed very little in terms of global carbon…
Urgent need for deep economic policy thinking
China in the 1980s was quite similar to Pakistan in terms of economic orientation – mainly an agriculture sector, and one that was trying to industrialize, while keeping macroeconomic imbalance…
Sri Lanka may need more IMF help as blasts threaten tourism
Sri Lanka faces a likely collapse in tourism following Easter Sunday bomb attacks on churches and hotels, which would deal a severe blow to the island's economy and financial markets,…
Neoliberalism, IMF’s exceptional financing & recidivist behaviour of programme countries—I
Traditionally, Pakistan has been infamously called a ‘one-tranche’ country, which although is correct in the context that it has left International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes after receiving a few initial…
Porous loans
“Rags make paper/ paper makes money/ Money makes banks/ Banks make loans/ Loans make beggars/ Beggars make rags” — an 18th-century poem, when paper was made from rags, not trees.…
IMF and provincial governments
Three provincial chief ministers from three competing political parties – Punjab (PML-N), Sindh (PPP) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (PTI) — are vying with each other to deliver more to their people…
