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With the prospect of protracted conflict on the entire western flank, Pakistan must now take sober stock of its resource position.
We pay for their failures, and they give themselves pay raises instead. In truth, the system is working just fine.
Either way, we had no choice but to pay. We were prisoners inside this grid.
Are we really being courted as an ally, a partner or a friend by the Trump White House?
Against the depletion of foreign exchange reserves, the battle is still on.
The flames consuming Gul Plaza were reminiscent of the inflationary fire that engulfed the country between March 2021 and May...
A stagnant economy cannot afford high prices, high taxes and high debt burdens for long.
When talking about solutions, it is critical to first have clarity on the problem.
Had it not been for the deft balancing act she performed in those months, Pakistan’s inflation would have peaked far higher
There was no sense in carrying this enterprise forward any longer. It should have been dumped over a decade ago.
Rarely, if ever, does one see an actual substantive issue being given actual substantive treatment on prime time television.
There are too many players now, and not enough space in the game for all of them.
Do the provinces have the right to ask where all the money poured into SOEs since 2009 has gone?
Real reform seeks to change the landscape against which economic behaviour plays itself out.
Something important is trying to speak through these manias that break out regularly every few years.
The same labour and capital inputs today will generate lesser output, produce fewer jobs and lift fewer people out of poverty.
THE provincial governments are under pressure to free up resources from their share of transfers under the NFC award to help meet defence and debt...
Nothing good has ever come out of the proposals the business community has been bringing to the government.
The problem is how to restart growth after stabilisation in a way that does not lead to a resurgence of the same deficits all over again.
All signs are now pointing in the direction of yet another incoming geopolitical rent.
Something important has changed and Pakistan’s stock in the eyes of the European capitals has risen.
The largest priority for Pakistan was the search for resources with which to fire up the next growth spurt.
The country’s growth model has run its course.
Put our rulers on the geopolitical chessboard and suddenly they are on home turf.
The uprisings in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal were all organic.
The state is trying to extract more revenues, and more dollars from an economy that is not able to supply these.
Rather than heckling and abusing each other, the ruling political parties need to realise that they are all facing a common enemy:
There is much that each provincial government needs to do to increase preparedness for the natural disasters hitting the country.
The belief now surging is that Israel is committing genocide.
We are not resilient because we choose to be. We are resilient because we have to be.
Today, the political parties are in greater disarray than they have been in the past quarter century.
The relentless tightening of conditions in the economy reflects the erosion of the underlying financial and economic viability of the state.
Having failed to broaden the tax net, they are now talking of ‘tax deepening’.