AN especially dangerous moment is opening up as the war in the Middle East transitions gears. The war launched by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu back in February has effectively ended. It devolve...
NOTHING gives them confidence like a pile of dollars in the reserves. Over the decades, I have seen this trend. Whoever is ruling Pakistan lacks confidence in themselves while the foreign exchange res...
WHEN a regulator fails to do its job, the consequences are felt by everyone, even if in ways too subtle to notice directly. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) is the apex regula...
HERE is an interesting question: if they decide to throw caution to the winds and pump growth this fiscal year, what sort of growth rates could they fetch given the state of the fiscal and foreign exc...
EVERY decade in Pakistan’s history has seen a moment when a robust defence of democracy as the best form of government for a country like ours is needed. The never-ending struggle for supremacy betw...
ONE good thing that has come out of this whole conversation about building the federation on new foundations is that it has exposed the most opportunistic elements among us. Those who crave the opport...
IT seems the finance minister’s meeting with the US treasury secretary last week has yielded some understandings that are already beginning to play themselves out. Consider the decisions made at the...
HERE we go again. Having succeeded in stabilising the economy and failed at reforming it, the government is not preparing to transition to high growth the old fashioned way: through borrowed dollars p...
THERE are many reasons to be bullish about Pakistan these days, not least the hard-fought stability in the external sector following a few years of near-catastrophic depletion of reserves. But there a...
THE powers of the tax machinery are growing more strident but the recovery of actual revenue is getting harder and harder. The new production monitoring system rolled out by the FBR in the last fiscal...