On tax amnesty
Amnesty is a one-time sovereign pardon of punitive legal proceedings offered to a specific class of lawbreakers. Unlike punishment, which is often retributive-cum-reformative, amnesty is reformative in nature, establishing the…
Is land reform off the menu? – III
Land and housing reforms: Innovations and opportunities due to the floods: The destruction of life and property of people due to floods have developed the need and rationale for launching…
Tax reform proposals
Pakistan has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios even amongst the bottom ranked developing nations. The following statistics are indicative of the unexploited potential for additional revenue generation. Whereas there…
Vehicles, weapons and violence
On March 2, 2013, a botched-up kidnapping attempt took place at an upscale shopping mall in Karachi. The crime was committed by the son of an influential person with a…
Foreign investment
Four features of Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s budget stand out. First, thanks to its obsession with reducing the fiscal deficit, the budget fails to raise social-sector expenditure – just when…
The parting kick?
In an editorial about the "long march" on Islamabad, and the approaching (really?) general elections, The Economist said the "transition would be historic: never in Pakistan's violent and unstable history…
Emerging economies
Since long, Pakistan is locked up in a situation of economic volatility, infrastructural deficit, financial disaster in public sector entities and growing poverty. Reformatory policies undertaken by different sectors of…
The state and economic development
The role of the Pakistani state in the country’s economy has recently come under scrutiny - in reference to the ongoing electricity and natural gas/CNG crisis. The argument usually put…
The orphan economy
There are at least six different parties and groups giving their own views about the state of the economy and the required direction of policies, and their viewpoints differ drastically…
Tax, power sectors need reforms
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) team visiting Pakistan on a Post Project Monitoring (PPM) mission a couple of weeks ago emphasised yet again the need for power and tax sector…
