Finance: Economy in need of sobriety

The situation of street crimes in Karachi is better than Washington and Paris, Sindh Senior Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon boasted last week. Quoting updates from the International Crime Index, he said at a presser that Karachi ranked 78th out of 333 cities in various countries, according to a Dawn report. Had the staff of the learned minister looked at the right page of Numbeo.Com (the one that displays current ratings), he would have been more pleasantly surprised to know that Karachi, in fact, ranks 82nd out of 345 cities in various countries. (The minister’s staff apparently gleaned information from the page that displayed historical indices). But that’s beside the point. Now, let’s revisit Numbeo.com and look at the current ratings. There, we find that Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad have far better rankings — 131st, 235th and 270th, respectively. Businessmen in Karachi must grow wiser now and move their businesses to these three cities.