‘Homegrown’ macroeconomic framework
The recent medium-term projections by some of the major multilateral agencies have created a strong sense of apprehension about the future prospects for the economy of Pakistan. For example, the…
Lessons from economic history: Policy drivers of food inflation
Overall inflation, compared to similar previous months of FY18, has been inching up from 5.1 percent in September 2018 to 9.4% in March 2019. For the ninth month period of…
Macroeconomic stabilisation
This following argument has been prompted by the State Bank of Pakistan's rejoinder to an editorial of this newspaper. This writer is of the view that there are serious questions…
Policy rate cut
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) met for the third time in less than one month on 16 April 2020 and reduced the rate to 9 percent - from 13.25 percent…
Economic policy choices beyond immediate crisis — I
The economic policy response to the coronavirus crisis by Pakistan has been significant. On the monetary policy side, the State Bank of Pakistan has taken aggressive action to loosen monetary…
Urgent need for revisiting economic policy
Prime Minister Imran Khan generally underscores the need for promoting wealth creation since there had been no meaningful effort by predecessor governments to create pro-business policies. This makes sense, but…
Macroeconomic choices for 2022
State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) increased policy rate by 1 percent (100 basis points) to 9.75 percent. This is the second increase by SBP within the period of a month…
Turkey’s central bank in no rush to start easing policy
The new governor of Turkey’s central bank, Naci Agbal, said he does not expect it to begin considering cutting interest rates from 17% until much later this year given upward…
Anatomy of policy making
We are all beneficiaries or victims of public policy. It is our end of the social contract that binds us to the state: giving the government the power to make…
Revisiting macro-economic policy
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), in its recent First Quarterly Report 2019-20, has stated that the policy mix adopted so far, “appears adequate to address the macroeconomic imbalances and…
