Changing fortunes
The world is changing or – to borrow the Kaptaan’s phrase – it has changed. In 1990, the US accounted for a quarter of the world’s GDP and China only…
The game-changer
Amidst a deteriorating security situation, the acute energy crisis and a crumbling economy, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited China and successfully concluded agreements for cooperation on crucial issues like energy…
Dar and the people
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop. — Murphy’s Law…
Anchoring KP province
I learnt there is just one flight per week from Lahore to Peshawar and it returns three days later. This prompted an investigation of how Peshawar is connected to the…
Rescuing Thar coal
Even as Pakistan's energy woes worsened - causing industries to shutdown, piling miseries upon people - the cheap and abundant solution to its energy problems languished and seemed lost in…
Indo-China relations
For quite some time, the Chinese top leadership seems to have made it a point – as much as is possible – to visit India and Pakistan back-to-back. In 2006,…
Managing the natural gas crisis
The dual menace of power and gas shortage is a serious issue that has caused much damage to the national economy and is likely to damage more, if the right…
Pakistan and leadership transition in China
Since the 1990s, China's top leaders serve a maximum of two five-year terms. With the last batch of leaders having reached the end of their second term last year, there…
Pathways to growth
On the whole, political parties have revealed little in their manifestos of what economic philosophy will govern their policies once in power — will it be the path of liberalisation,…
Challenge of GDP growth
Lacklustre economic growth and large fiscal and external imbalances (with declining rates of growth also contributing to poor growth in revenues) have made macro-economic management a challenging task. Still-high inflation…
