KARACHI: Four (4) U’s of Pakistan - unsustainability, unstabilty, unequitability and uncertainty - are the root causes of the bad economic condition of Pakistan.

5 Cs - courage, competence, credibility, commitment, coordination and compassion - are needed to progress.

“All governments are responsible for the bad economic condition and we can not blame anyone of them. Today, we compare ourselves with India, Bangladesh and China but the statistics have proven our position in terms of per capita income as very detrimental. Foreign direct investment is very low, main contributor is China, its share is 48 percent of the total FDI.”

This was disclosed by Prominent Economist and Director, Faculty Development Academy, Comsats University, Dr Aneel Salman in a Webinar on the topic of “Deciphering Pakistan Economy” organised by Dr Safia Minhaj, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Karachi.

More than 130 students attended the webinar.

He emphasised that “we should increase our budget for health and education sectors and give more attention to these two sectors as compared to real estate sector. One more big dilemma is that governments always try to hire personalities outside Pakistan, why we do not rely on our own citizens and give them confidence who are very well aware about the ground realities of the economy.”

Serious problems, such as the system failure that entails the saving-investment gap, and trade gap, short term strategies, liquidity problems and the myopic Pakistani mindset were discussed in detail.

Implementation of the mop approach, increasing the productivity, focusing on agrarian development, education and health were the main points thoroughly highlighted by Dr Aneel Salman on which the students showed the acceptance on the theory he presented.

The discussion started off with clear cut statistics including indices such as human development index, human capital index, global competitiveness index and world happiness index, which led to the evaluation that Pakistan has been on the last part of the leg on every index except world happiness index. Dr Aneel also mentioned the thoughts of anti-industry macro framework in Pakistan as described by Dr Kaiser Bengali.

The discussion moved on with mentioning prominent macroeconomic concepts such as devaluation and Marshall Lerner condition which doesn’t apply here in Pakistan. Dr Aneel’s highly curated presentation mentioned his set of ideas that were insightful for the students. Further keeping the session lively, Dr Aneel indulged with students asking them about this scenario. As economists it was concluded with the idea that we have knocked the door of IMF for as much as 13 times.

The session was concluded with the Q/A session which was perfectly answered by Dr Aneel along with Dr Safia for her unique approach of viewing the economy.—PR