Where’s the beef?
The recently concluded 12th review of the IMF program has inadvertently confirmed the listless achievements of the Nawaz Sharif's governments during the last three years. The interesting part of the…
How to transform indirect tax system
One of the biggest impediments towards achieving higher sustainable economic growth in Pakistan is the poor taxation system and abysmally low tax collections. Due to failure of successive governments to…
Brexit – a stupidity under compulsion
Brexiteers belong to Britain. Britain used to be our colonial master and still rules our spiritual roost but how come our erstwhile owners could be so stupid and blind to…
Russia-US saber-rattling over Baltic Sea
Lately the Soviet fighter jets made low flybys over United States Naval Ship Donald Cook over the Baltic Sea in a planned move to deter American naval forces. Russian combat…
Poverty of our reform ambition
The passage of the integrated Goods and Services Tax (GST) legislation in the Indian Rajya Sabha is a landmark measure. Years in the making, it has taken a clear-headed determination…
Fleeting moments The emerging power
After the Russian forces crossed River Oxus in February 1989, having lost 15,000 men in a decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, Russia was not to remain the same. The US-led coalition…
International law & foreign policy
The recently released Chilcot Report of the Iraq Inquiry has created quite a stir in international law and politics. Crucially, its bruising fallout for the UK and US also offers…
Reality of ‘war on drugs’
If politics makes strange bedfellows, politics and drugs produce even stranger ones. The partnership between drug trafficking and national politics has taken a truly bizarre turn in the fight against…
Asia-Europe economic cooperation
Of the several interesting seminars, I recently attended at Frankfurt the one on Asian European integration was extremely forward looking in its content. It sported prominent panellists, including our own…
The data controversy
Official statistics are a public trust. Much of the edifice (if not all) of government policy effort and action should be rested on the foundations of accurate, credible, transparent, accountable…
