News

Is the textile sector recovering?

Pakistan’s large-scale manufacturing (LSM) sector continued to face headwinds in first ten months of this fiscal year (July 2024–April 2025), contracting by 1.52 per cent year-on-year, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). The decline reflects ongoing challenges in key industries such as food, chemicals, iron and steel. However, textile manufacturing — the largest component of L

Indian ban fails to hit Pakistan’s trade

India’s attempt to disrupt Pakistan’s external trade by banning ships carrying Pakistani goods from anchoring at its ports has failed to yield the desired impact, according to shipping industry representatives. On May 2, India imposed a ban on ships carrying goods originating from or destined for Pakistan, barring them from entering Indian ports or transiting through Indian territory. The move

Time to raise finances for priority sectors

Apparently, there seems to be more self-assertion by provinces in the country’s public policies, as indicated by record high annual development plans, while linking the provincial budget surpluses for fiscal consolidation to actual and not projected federal fiscal transfers. The existing centralised framework of fiscal federalism has been put under some pressure. The PML-N-ruled Punjab governme

Another step towards a cashless future

“I’ve been bowled over by the response from users to the launch of Google Wallet in Pakistan,” said Chen Way Siew, Partnership Lead for Financial Institutions, Networks & Transit at Google. It was one of the top 10 downloaded apps on the Play Store in the first two weeks of its launch, he added in an email response. Since its launch in March, Google Wallet has been downloaded 552,733 times in P

Financial inclusion in bloom

Documenting history is unfortunately not one of the strongest suits of Pakistan, at least beyond the same old themes of security and civil-military relations. The lesser-known stories of social change, driven by technology and innovative businesses, hardly ever make it out in written form even though they may provide us with far more room for optimism. Perhaps we are so used to self-deprecation th