Fiscal reforms agenda
Taxation, a potent instrument to shape and influence the socio-economic policies of a country, has not received due attention in Pakistan. The foremost objective of a rational tax policy is…
A new emerging market
IN the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in the US and, later, in Europe, global economic growth was generated mainly by the so called ‘emerging markets’, especially China, Brazil,…
Fair taxation
"The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me; it has its origins way back in time. For example, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun wrote in his fourteenth-century…
Forces of divergence in Pakistan
Thomas Picketty, the French economist known for his work on wealth and income inequalities, has challenged the old economic verities about an inverted U-shaped relation between economic growth and inequality.…
Reality of ‘statistical discrepancy’
According to Press reports, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has started probing the figures presented by the government regarding fiscal deficit, expenses and revenue collection. This has been done in…
The failure of economic democracy
Democracy is not about national assemblies and certainly not about asset building. It has its roots everywhere and is answerable on all these counts. You cannot have a hybrid adha…
Energy sector still in disarray
It is now over two years that the government is struggling to define and structure a realistic roadmap to resolve the energy crisis. The state of energy sector governance continues…
Crossing the chasm
The release this past April of the World Bank's 2014 Findex report was a major wake-up call for Pakistan. Less than 10 percent of Pakistani adults have an account at…
Asylum-seekers – the bitter harvest
The tragedies that the global media is now focused on are the seemingly endless miseries of thousands of war-inflicted men, women, and children from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria who…
Alienated Fata
The political and judicial vacuum, coupled with bad governance and massive corruption in state institutions that resulted in creating a gap between the state and society, ultimately led to the…
