Power sector reforms: lessons from Turkey
Pakistan embarked upon a series of reforms in the power sector in the 1990s, more or less around the same time as Turkey. In Pakistan, these reforms started with the…
Budget 2019-20 & tax reforms
Budget 2019-20, expected to be announced in the last week of this month, will be very important for the coalition government of Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf (PTI). It will determine the direction…
Stimulus and institutional reform
Unlike many budgets in the past, the Budget 2021/22 places strong emphasis on providing stimulus for economic growth, and significantly focuses that stimulus towards people in the lower echelons of…
Stabilization and growth without much reforms – II
In contrast to the prescription being followed in Pakistan like in many other IMF programme countries over the years, the state mostly fixed markets; it did not shape them, as…
Stabilisation and growth without much reforms – I
In the latest interaction with the public, Prime Minister Imran Khan highlighted that the country’s economy had been performing well because firstly its growth rate has shown healthy performance, and…
Civil service reforms
The Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood, in his capacity as head of the cabinet committee on institutional reforms, announced this week major reforms in the Civil…
Institutional autonomy in Pakistan
The recent kerfuffle about central bank autonomy in Pakistan is unraveling some basic fissures in Pakistan’s economy, confronting which our economic managers and political leaders have continually tried to ostrich…
Reforms: theory and practice
Institutional reforms are basic to good governance, and Pakistan is in dire need of such reforms – political to bureaucratic to the public sector. Pakistan has seen multiple phases of…
Case for All-Pakistan Unified Tax Service: PTI & innovative tax reforms
Generally the taxation system in developing countries witnesses low tax-to-GDP ratio owing to several factors such as high compliance costs, complex tax rate structures, multiple tax agencies and narrow tax…
Improving institutional quality determinants
Pakistan recently entered into an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme with International Monetary Fund (IMF). The programme has a medium-term (39-month) horizon, and in terms of goals and supporting conditionalities…
