PBS needs a makeover
Policymaking at all levels of government requires precise, timely and accurate statistics to achieve various targets such as growth rates, government spending, or interest rate setting. Data and information gaps,…
Growth rate: PBS under the spotlight
The provisional estimates for 2022-23 of the GDP by sector and by expenditure have been released recently by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). According to these estimates, the GDP…
GDP rebasing: fix PBS first
Key macroeconomic ratios – debt, fiscal and current account are measured in terms of nominal GDP and feed into determination of crucial indicators on country ratings. The investment and debt…
Dying newspapers
AS a student and later a lecturer of journalism, the future of newspapers and the challenges faced by print media were part of the academic discourse. But three decades ago,…
Visionary effort
The launch of the URAAN Pakistan framework began a debate in economic and political circles. While some critics discard it as yet another policy intervention attempt with limited implementation prospects,…
Ramazan and revenue
Ramazan, a month of profound spiritual reflection and devotion, also emerges as a period of significant economic activity in Pakistan. For Muslims worldwide, Ramazan offers a chance to strengthen their…
Poverty may trump low inflation
Inflation has come down dramatically – from 28.3 percent in January 2024 to 1.5 percent in February 2025. The question remains: why isn’t there a feel-good factor? Inflation, economists maintain,…
Extremely high unemployment rate
The digital Population and Housing Census of 2023 conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has come up with an amazing and extremely worrying estimate. Apparently, the overall national…
Divide between nominal vs real GDP
The consolidated federal and provincial fiscal operations data for fiscal year 2024-25 assumes nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at 124,150 million rupees (defined as total market value of goods and…
Improving the price indices
There has been an upsurge in the rate of inflation to almost a double-digit rate and some controversy over the measurement in the case of gas and electricity prices, in…
