Ishrat Husain

On top of the adverse global and national developments in a post-pandemic world, Sindh and Balochistan got severely hit by extraordinary torrential rains in a short interval of time. During this time, the average rainfall received was 1100 mm — five times the normal. According to the Sindh chief minister, flooding from Balochistan amounted to 120 maf of flood water ...

Sindh has a population of around 50 million. There is an equal division – 52 per cent live in urban areas while 48 per cent in rural areas and around 38 per cent of them derive their livelihoods from agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing. The organized manufacturing sector and services have little presence in the rural areas and much of ...

Gulf States: Pakistan has enjoyed very friendly relations with the Gulf States. The first generation of Emirates rulers were very favourably disposed towards Pakistan as they received a lot of cooperation in their journey towards the modernization of the country. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have absorbed a large number of Pakistani workers in their labour force and are the ...

China: there are several areas where the ongoing cooperation between Pakistan and China should be continued but at least three areas need to be focused for accelerated implementation. These are: one, completion of ongoing projects under CPEC – addition of capacity to the national power grid by bringing the hydropower, renewable energy and coal projects to culmination. The ML1 Railway ...

The 2021 National Security Policy has made geo-economics its main pivot. It is therefore essential to look in a coherent and comprehensive manner how Pakistan’s economic relations with other nations should evolve to meet this objective. In designing foreign economic policy we should always keep in mind that such a policy would be a by-product of the country’s larger foreign ...

Community organizations have built bridges, irrigation channels and other small infrastructure projects at much lower costs as they participated in the supply of labour and land parcels for these projects. The incentive structure made them realize that this would lead to the doubling of their farm incomes. The improved marketing of produce through better roads and bridges contributed to accretion ...

This article is part of a series to raise general awareness about the economic conditions and potential of the provinces and territories that do not have the same advantages as the other advanced parts of the country. The first article on Balochistan’s development was published a few months ago. This one is focused on Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). GB, situated in the ...

Despite impressive achievements since 1991, India is facing several major challenges. A major problem is absorbing its youth in a productive labour force and finding gainful employment for them. Half of its population is under the age of 25. Only 35 per cent of the working age population has a job while 12 million new entrants would enter the labour ...

India’s success factors may be many but three salient features need emphasis. First, Indian entrepreneurs are dynamic, vibrant and innovative. They even used the socialist economy regime of control and license raj for ‘learning by doing’. Just to give an example, India had a ramshackle automobile industry dominated by two outdated models until the 1990s. The suppliers, engineers, vendors, parts ...

The recent devastating floods which have displaced or affected 30 million people, destroyed or damaged a million houses, buildings, structures, bridges, roads, rail connections, highways, commercial properties, disrupted movement of goods have brought unbearable grief to the whole nation. The losses to the economy are still being assessed but a rough and approximate estimate indicates that it may be around ...