Supremely fallible?
Pick a financial or economic crisis – anywhere, anytime – and in its wake you’ll find calls for better, stronger regulation and oversight. Thanks to the fear of contagion in…
Legal vs operational autonomy of SBP
Major amendments were made by the parliament in 1994 and 1997 in the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Act on the initiative of the SBP itself that gave it, inter…
Two-way street
Among the most fundamental and least appreciated features of society’s historical advance is its inherently dialectical nature, which is to say that the benefits of development have never accrued equally…
‘Tax Justice Agenda’
The extending of extraordinary tax-free benefits to the powerful classes, failure to tap actual tax potential, indulgence in wasteful expenditure and funding of inefficient public sector enterprises are continuously pushing…
New peaks in short-termism
Last week, the Finance Minister admitted that in 2013-14, revenue collection could fall short by Rs 130 billion and, as expected, federal government's development budget has been cut by Rs…
US public pensions need more than investment windfall
Double-digit annual returns for most US public pension systems over the past two years have done little to shrink the yawning deficits facing many of them after a decade of…
The image factor
The 'Jamshed Dasti affair' has prompted the pro-democracy elements to come to the rescue of the parliamentarians, and rightly so. But the problem is that recent events have tarnished the…
Egypt investors believe Sisi presidency will bring stability
Egyptian Army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi may not look like a model democrat, but foreign and local businessmen believe he can deliver stability to open up investment opportunities…
Budget thoughts
What ‘Grand Design’ will inform the formulation of next year’s budget? And what should that design be? By the time final shape is given to the federal budget, it is…
Insipid IMF
On March 24, the IMF executive board released a statement on the state of the economy on the completion of the second review of the government’s policy performance supported by…
