THERE is growing acknowledgment of macroeconomic stabilisation in recent months. Inflation is down, the current account has posted surpluses for four consecutive months on the back of rising remittances, foreign exchange reserves are growing, and export growth, while…
AFTER the Feb 8 elections and the events preceding it left Pakistan badly divided, unwelcome developments are taking place which could severely strain the federation’s unity. It is incumbent on…
A FEW weeks after the ECP announced the date for general elections in the country — settling the issue, one would have thought — speculation has again gripped the imagination of many…
LAST week, on these pages, Khurram Husain published an insightful and timely piece on Nawaz Sharif’s return and its implications for the management of Pakistan’s economy. Dubbing state-financed, consumption-dependent growth as the…
“We’re captive on the carousel of time,” sang Joni Mitchell, “and go round and round and round/In the circle game.” The circle game is Pakistan’s dependence on stand-by credit, this…
In an analysis of the 7th NFC Award (‘Fiscal realities: A case for NFC reform’, March 20), published on these pages, I showed that provincial governments collect a small fraction…
Pakistan’s most important decision-makers are now facing a dire and extreme choice. They can either choose to inflict some long overdue pain on elite rent seekers, or they can choose…
Pakistan has witnessed a steep decline over the last two years, maybe the steepest in its post-partition (1971) history. If there is one overarching trigger or issue that is at…
An ‘Alhamdulillah’ moment it was for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif when Pakistan reached a nine-month $3 billion staff-level agreement with the IMF on Friday, the second day of Eid. And…
For almost the entire week, so many of us had anxiously waited for the threatened arrival of a cyclone. Since there was an element of unpredictability about how it would…
