Japan’s policymakers hold fire as yen enters intervention range
As the yen slid past 145 per dollar with barely a murmur from Japanese policymakers during recent days, suspicion grew that they won’t be as quick to order intervention as…
A mission-oriented industrial policy
‘While it is generally true that mainstream economists have responded to industrial policy with knee-jerk hostility since at least the 1970s, things have been changing fast, owing to new academic…
BOJ in a bind as price pressures heighten case for early policy tweak
The Bank of Japan is caught in a dilemma with growing prospects of sustained inflation heightening the case for an early tweak to its yield control policy, despite Governor Kazuo…
The indictment of monetary policy
The Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) documents uploaded on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) website this Tuesday past, 18 July, added monetary policy mis-calibration to the risk assessment matrix – missing from…
Towards biogas policy
Biogas has acquired a new fillip in the wake of the Ukraine conflict in Europe. The latter wants to acquire independence from imported gas from Russia. Climate change targets have…
Japan’s changing views on price hikes open door for BOJ policy tweak
Japanese consumers may finally be shedding their decades-old frugal mindset, spending more on items that retailers were once too afraid to raise prices on and paving the way for the…
Climate change crisis and multilateralism
‘I played a key role as chair of the African Union during the Covid period. We felt like we were beggars when it came to vaccine availability. When we felt…
Power plant retirement policy
There are plans to retire 19 power plants of an aggregate capacity of 7339 MW as per IGCEP (Integrated Generation Capacity Expansion Plan) in the period 2021-2031. Due to the…
Huge global economic policy challenges
‘The world is facing numerous extreme, interlinked challenges, including a climate emergency and growing economic inequalities between and within countries. Tackling these problems requires funds to flow in the right direction,…
Towards industrial policy 2.0: Part – V
Infrastructure: Pakistan’s unending energy crisis and high-end user costs have enormously damaged industrial growth and diversification, particularly the export sector.The present model of single buyer-single seller is the root cause…
