What awaits the next setup

AS the noise and fury builds up in the run-up to the election, it is perhaps worthwhile to briefly disengage from the intensity of the moment and cast...

Falling rupee

LET’S start with a basic truth: a depreciation in the exchange rate is not the end of the world. Nor is it, by itself, a sign of a calamity....

Hours of darkness

NAWAZ Sharif campaigned on the promise to end load-shedding, and the PML-N’s message throughout their campaign is going to rest heavily on their...

Between tragedy and farce

THERE is a school of thought which says that you can know something about the creator of anything by studying his or her handiwork. Works of art can...

Imran Khan’s 100 days

HERE is what I don’t get: all the people and parties criticising Imran Khan’s 100-day agenda presented over the weekend, how come they don’t...

The wages of disinformation

IT struck me as oddly profound when, as a child, I first learned that aphorism that all schoolchildren are taught at some point in their education: a...

The 4.9 billion-dollar blunder

A BIG round of applause for the honourable chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is due. And following the applause, a medal is in...

Scorched earth, parched lands

FROM Badin to Rahim Yar Khan, reports are pouring in of water shortages so severe they have left devastation in their wake, and episodic scuffling...

Between defence and development

Budgeting for reality

FROM the strategy paper we already know one thing: this budget is going to be a ‘populist’ one. Everybody said that last year, but they turned out...

Load-shedding returns to Karachi

FOR many people in Karachi, load-shedding was becoming a receding memory. An even larger number may not agree, since load-shedding in areas designated...

Taxing non-filers

WE are now told by the government’s revenue adviser that the next budget will seek to increase the tax charged to non-filers of income tax returns...

Fear of debt

IT is easy to be alarmist about a topic like the level of the national debt, and it is equally easy to mislead people into thinking that the problem...

Reversing the 18th Amendment?

THE recent remarks attributed to the army chief in a widely read newspaper report saying that the 18th Amendment presents a serious problem bigger...

The Pakhtun spring

AN incredible series of events is unfolding in the aftermath of the murder of Naqeebullah Mehsud. A group of young Pakhtun men and women, have found...

The China-India tango

TO those who have been paying attention despite the noise and fury of the domestic political scene, something very important appears to be changing...

Rackets and racketeers

FROM here till the handover of power to an interim setup, the government’s priorities will increasingly become survivalist in nature. Already the...

Between FATF and GSP Plus

TWO parallel developments in the past few days perfectly illustrate how Pakistan’s economic diplomacy is caught between a rock and a hard place. On...

Banning terror groups

THE Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is all set to take up the question of whether Pakistan is complying with international commitments to prevent...

Fire up the solar revolution

THE mad rush into coal-fired power generation is fuelling rising concerns that we could be heading in the wrong direction in planning for our future...

Growing pains

THIS might sound like a very elementary question, but it needs to be asked anyway. How do you describe an economy that is growing, but the growth is...

Vengeance is not justice

NOW that an arrest has been made in the gruesome case of the horrific murder of little Zainab of Kasur, it is disturbing to see calls mounting for a...

Domestic investors’ voice

FOR a number of years now, the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) has been conducting an exercise they call the Pakistan Economic Forum where they put...

Trading in the yuan

A LARGE misunderstanding is growing that Pakistan has just opened the door to settling all bilateral trade with China in yuan instead of the dollar....

Tweet of the president

YES, we can say it’s all very funny until the bombs begin to drop. The brand new year 2018 began with the president of the United States apparently...

The year of Dar’s reckoning

THIS was the one year that Pakistan needed a strong finance minister. The economy had been on a mild recovery that was gaining momentum since 2013....

CPEC plan details still awaited

THE Long Term Plan for CPEC ‘launched’ by the government on Monday is, as feared, only an abridged, abbreviated, and heavily edited version of the...

What’s up with the rupee?

ON Friday, the State Bank launched what appeared to the rest of us like an ambush. All of a sudden, in morning trade, the supports that have propped...

CPEC spinal corridor

MORE news trickling out of the recent meeting between Pakistani and Chinese delegations to thrash out the future shape of CPEC points to an important...

Politics of hate

THREE critical vulnerabilities have been exposed in the last few years when dharna politics has taken centre stage in the country. Each one is a...

China’s road through Pakistan

MINISTER Planning Mr Ahsan Iqbal has been busy of late. He has had to deal with those nuisance protesters blocking the road, then play host to the...

Test the air, taste the fury

BETWEEN 2010 and 2015, Pakistan experienced a rain-related flood every monsoon season, yet not much changed in how we responded to this, or even how...

Keeping out of ME quagmire

THIS is one of my worst nightmares, and it is getting perilously close. Now that the young prince of Saudi Arabia has decided to settle all family...

CPEC Long Term Plan

PLANNING MINISTER Mr Ahsan Iqbal has finally confirmed that the CPEC Long Term Plan (LTP) is about to be finalised on Nov 21 at the seventh Joint...