The conversation around financial inclusion is still new in Pakistan’s mainstream. But within the self-indulgent policy circle, it’s quite a hot topic — one that gets you conference speaker slots and juicy grants from foreign donors. Unfortunately, it continues to be discussed in very broad terms, at least for the most part, where the lens is typically limited to the national aggregates. For
The current exercise by the federal government to formulate a five-year plan is seen by many as somewhat misplaced in view of the expected three-year top-priority International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilisation programme. In the past, as well, the 23 bailouts by the Fund and its reforms agenda took precedence over implementations of five-year plans; to quote an analyst, “Much of the five-year p
Pakistan stands as the sixth-largest recipient of global remittances, with a remittances-to-GDP ratio of over 7 per cent. This translates to approximately $30.3 billion, making remittances the country’s second-largest source of income, trailing only exports, which contribute about 9pc to GDP. Notably, Pakistan’s remittance-to-GDP ratio surpasses that of neighbouring countries like Bangladesh an
The business community had higher expectations from the government and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb. They expressed disappointment over the government’s lacklustre response to reports of multinationals planning to exit and local companies moving their back offices abroad. Pakistani businessmen viewed PML-N as more business-friendly than other political parties and expected that the finan
If you thought excessive indebtedness was a Pakistan-only problem, you were mistaken. Global public debt — both domestic and external — continues to increase rapidly, driven by cascading crises, as well as sluggish and uneven performance of the global economy. It hit a new ‘milestone’ last year: a staggering $97 trillion, up from $91.4tr in 2022 and $50tr in 2010. And more than a third of that