Tag: Economic Reform PK
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How History May Remember Nawaz Sharif
The article is written by Imran Aslam Khan, an Aviation Professional and Businessman. Supporters will remember Nawaz Sharif as a three-time Prime Minister who championed motorway construction, energy projects and infrastructure development. His critics, however, argue that his political legacy is defined more by expediency than by institution-building. From this critical perspective, Sharif emerged from…
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Pakistan’s Pension Time Bomb
By Fazeel Asif. Pakistan’s fiscal debates follow a familiar script. Tax collection is too low. The IMF programme is fragile. Debt is rising. Exports are weak. These problems are real. But one of the most consequential threats to the country’s financial future sits largely unexamined: the pension bill. It is growing faster than the economy.…
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Without Industrialisation, Pakistan’s Youth Dividend Becomes a Youth Disaster.
By Fazeel Asif. Pakistan’s industrial decline did not happen by accident. It was a choice, made incrementally over decades, and the country is still paying for it. The most consequential moment came in 1972. When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto launched his nationalisation programme, the stated objectives were reasonable enough. The country had come through…
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This Budget Manages Pakistan. It Does Not Move Pakistan Forward
By Fazeel Asif. Let’s be clear: the Economic Survey is not a lie. But it is not the truth most Pakistanis live. The numbers are methodologically defensible. The poverty line is official. The unemployment rate follows global definitions. The growth figures come through established statistical processes. None of that is invented. But an economy can…
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Pakistan’s Last Bet: The Demographic Window Is Closing
By Fazeel Asif. Pakistan’s working-age population grows by roughly 4 million people every year. The formal economy creates, in a good year, fewer than a million jobs. Half the country’s adults never enter the labour force at all. Barely a quarter of its women do. Twenty million children, the next decade’s labour bulge, are not…
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Pakistan’s $50 Billion Agriculture Problem No One in Power Wants to Fix
By Fazeel Asif. After years of working with federal and provincial governments across multiple administrations, I have learned something uncomfortable about reform in Pakistan. Failure here is rarely accidental. It is usually defended. Good ideas do not collapse because they are flawed. They collapse because they threaten rents. Task forces delay decisions. Consultants provide cover.…