Rent-seeking and governance
There is no denying the penetration of rent-seeking in the country. It is reflected in multiple forms and manifestations. The elite ie landlords, industrialists, top civil and military bureaucracy are…
Fiscal priorities
What can the caretaker administration do to bring much-needed sanity to the fiscal framework? With a backdrop of a record budget deficit of around 10 per cent of GDP staring…
Drug giants slug it out in the ‘world’s pharmacy’
Global drug giants have been fighting to defend their inventions in Indian courts, a battle that could cut supplies of affordable, essential drugs for millions of poor people and impact…
Damage done
There appears to be a serious disconnect between most of the analysts, including myself, and the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on the emerging debt repayment crisis.…
The political minimum
The issue of raising minimum wage hit the headlines recently with the announcement of election manifestos by different parties. All of them promised a substantial increase in the minimum wage…
Agenda for the nation: 2013 and beyond – I
The next government, which is expected to be in power sometime this year, shall have to formulate a national agenda for the next five years in the context of global,…
Gresham’s Law and its present-day manifestations
In the 16th Century, coinage system was widely in use in Britain. The Government of the day soon realised that it was costing it more to mint the coins than…
Institutional pillage
`Fiscal Neanderthals`. This is how a friend used to describe the finance and FBR bureaucracy and their parliamentary `handlers` after each bout of resistance to tax reform and the introduction…
IP pipeline: the energy corridor
Amidst heightened frenzy of elections approaching in Pakistan, the President of Pakistan announced the commencement of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline (IP)on March 11, 2013.The purpose of this project was to import…
How to build a state
In a statement released to the press in the wake of the gruesome massacre of Shia Hazaras in Quetta, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared, rather ominously, that Pakistan was…
