November 2018

A powerful social accountability tool Freedom of information is not only a human right, but also an essential tool to engage and empower citizens to demand accountability from governments, and fight corruption. That is why ‘right to information’ (RTI) and the relevant laws, as well as the associated institutions have become a symbol of a society’s commitment to good governance. …

By: Asad Hussain The ever-worsening bilateral relationship of the two archrivals, Pakistan and India, is fast moving towards an unmanageable phase of circumstances. During the recent months, a warlike situation has been witnessed on the Line of Control (LoC) and in India-occupied Kashmir. The two neighbouring states are excessively involved in waging propaganda wars only to defame each other. The …

Introduction Change is equal to resistance: the outlook is true for the public sector and more so for the justice sector of Pakistan. In mathematical proportions, the increasing expectations and the decreasing patience on the part of the public are proportional to the increasing inertia and decreasing flexibility on the part of organizations and institutions in the public sector. Strangely …

By: Dr Hafiz A. Pasha There are visible signs that the economy is beginning to slow down. During the last five years, the growth process had gradually begun to gather some momentum. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics had, no doubt, been compelled to exaggerate the GDP growth rate. But the evidence was convincing that the economy had moved up from …

By: Waqar Masood Khan There is a lot of flux that characterizes the world economy at present. While developed markets are performing exceptionally well, emerging markets (EM) are facing high uncertainty. More importantly, a very large number of market pundits are predicting that a great recession is just around the corner. The emerging markets are under huge stress. Their currencies …

By: Osama Rizvi A Blueprint for Much-needed Reforms With a $313bn economy (as per the latest 2018 figures released by the State Bank of Pakistan), Pakistan is a country that has undergone a panoply of changes during the recent years. The year 2016 was the annus mirabilis as the stock market yielded a mouth-watering return of 46 percent. Besides this, …

By: Sarfraz Saroya A Quick Guide In every country around the world, fiscal or budgetary constraints have seen the governments adopt supplementary and innovative approaches to infrastructure provisioning and funding, away from the traditional role of the government as the only infrastructure service-provider, to include the expertise and finance of the private sector. One such measure is Public-Private Partnership which …

By: Michael Spence Powerful implications of the Restructuring of the World A decade after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the world economy is back on shaky ground. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the world economy is at risk of another financial meltdown, following the failure of governments and regulators to push …

As concerns over Donald Trump’s import tariffs intensify and Britain renegotiates its trading relationship with Europe, the postwar consensus towards ever-closer economic cooperation between wealthy nations is being unpicked. Why is Trade Good? Economists argue about a lot of things, yet many would probably agree on the benefits of free trade, which generates wealth by allowing the free flow of …

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception” Only the bigoted would deny that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has very cleverly impregnated his country’s foreign policy with an unprecedented dynamism and assertiveness. Earlier this year, a study conducted by China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), a think tank affiliated with the Chinese foreign ministry, also …