Amid rising interest payments and disruptions caused by a change in government, Pakistan’s development expenditure has nearly come to a standstill, with just Rs22.5 billion spent in the first two months (July-August) of the fiscal year, against an annual budget allocation of Rs950bn. According to data from the ministry of planning and development, the actual expenditure on core development in t
Growing up in a Pakistani household, lessons in “saving something for a rainy day” are inculcated into children from a young age. These savings could be in the form of cash or assets, like gold. For every family, the definition of a “rainy day” varies, but in our parlance, they broadly refer to any event that throws the family’s finances off the rails — a wedding, sudden illness and business losse
Stock prices rose on Wednesday amid strong financial results and surging global crude oil prices. Arif Habib Corporation analyst Ahsan Mehanti said further recovery in the rupee’s value against the dollar along with upbeat data of auto sales, which rose 49 per cent month-on-month in August, caused the rise in share prices. In addition, speculations ahead of the policy rate decision by the Mo
THE spiral of inflation and devaluation the country is caught up in did not begin a few months ago. It began in 2021. The rupee had fluctuated in a band between 150 and 155 to the dollar since the middle of 2019. In May 2021, it was hit by the first bout of volatility that has not abated since then, despite the value of the dollar having doubled. It took more than 10 years for the dollar to dou
PAKISTAN is experiencing its most severe economic crisis in recent history. However, as I have argued previously, this crisis is “a crisis like no other” (Dawn, May 2022). It is not just an economic meltdown, but a confluence of myriad and complex challenges in the political, governance and environment domains. With regards to the economy, the current episode is comparable in many ways to the e