The sombre policies of the poorly-crafted federal budget for 2024-2025 could hinder digital prosperity and significantly impact the IT sector, which had recently begun gaining momentum after Covid-19. This situation might lead to a potential fiasco, exacerbating the brain drain of highly-skilled IT professionals. Policy makers and the elite are seen as neglecting the country’s foundations while
Pakistan’s economy pivots around two essentials, ie, textiles and energy because 60% of our exports constitute textiles, while 30% of imports comprise energy. This becomes more critical when various studies project the export potential at $50 billion per year by 2030, though they were worth only $16.5 billion in FY 2022-23 with the historical maximum reaching $22.1 billion in FY22. Some sour
A new narrative of “home-grown solutions” takes the lead. A piece by Dr Ishrat Husain endorsing it appeared in The News on June 8. It’s a good omen that the narrative of home-grown solutions is making waves, though not in government circles, and only in the domain of civil society thinking (this thinking takes shape mostly in WhatsApp group chats and published writings). After cursorily enlisti
It’s been about 14 to 15 years since the 18th Constitutional Amendment and the preceding 7th NFC Award; both have now come of age. The amendment resulted in many good outcomes, through its 102 amendments. However, two (out of the 100-plus amendments), which govern the division of revenues between provinces and the federation, have led to some undesired consequences for financial management of t
Remittances from the export of information and communication technology (ICT) services surged to $332 million in May 2024, reflecting an astounding increase of 40.7% compared to export earnings of $236 million in May 2023. Overall, in 11 months (July-May) of the current fiscal year, the ICT export remittances swelled to $2.925 billion compared with the income of $2.371 billion reported for the