PARTLY FACETIOUS: Has Dar read a certain IMF document?
'My question to him is: has he read the International Monetary Fund (IMF) document in which the Finance Minister has pledged no new economic zones — special to one nationality or not.'
'Hey, that's not his responsibility anymore — that is the Finance Minister's task.'
'The Special Investment Facilitation Council, which epitomises the same page doctrine, has pledged to the Fund staff that a level playing field would be ensured with regard to investment environment and there will be no watering down in governance standards. And agreed to phase out existing SEZ's while no new SEZs…'
'For your information, a Deputy Prime Minister also wearing the hat of Foreign Minister is a grade above the Finance Minister.'
'Just a grade?'
'That depends on whom you ask: A Prime Minister heads the cabinet, and in his absence the Deputy Prime Minister…'
'Irrespective of who appoints whom?'
'They are all on the same page, you idiot.'
'That's true, sorry, anyway don't worry about it – by the time the SEZ is actually set up the government may have changed.'
'God willing.'
'Of course, but just to clarify, on average we take a decade or so to set anything up so…'
'I propose the task be allocated to Visionary 2035…'
'I agree, Ahsan Iqbal would certainly be the right man for the job.'
'His visions are truly beautiful, but so far his vision for the party to remain in power to realize even one of his vision…'
'Maybe this time around.'
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
44 minutes ago
- Express Tribune
BRICS declares the South is done begging
As the world frays under trade wars, resource conflicts and the US credibility unravels under the weight of its own aggressive exceptionalism, BRICS declared that the emperor has no clothes and the Global South was done waiting for crumbs from imperial banquet tables. Held under the shadow of US belligerence and amid fresh wounds inflicted by wars equipped and backed by the West, the bloc's latest summit took on the air of a reawakened Non-Aligned Movement, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asserting the Washington must stop 'behaving like an empire and 'begin respecting the sovereignty of others'. His response came in response to US Donald Trump's renewed tariff theatrics in the wake of the bloc's asserting of its sovereignty. The alliance's leaders reaffirmed their commitment to multilateralism, sovereign equality and a restructuring of global governance to reflect a 'new multipolar reality.' In a joint declaration the bloc warned that rising protectionism threatened global trade and called for reforms of institutions like the UN Security Council and the IMF so they better reflect emerging economies. The declaration was unusually muscular and named the reality of Gaza as a 'war of aggression' and condemned tactics such as starvation sieges that even NATO countries tiptoe around. Furthermore, it strongly backed Palestinian self-determination and expressing 'grave concern' over Israel's Gaza war and reiterating support for a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. The declaration also denounced the US–Israeli bombing of Iran's nuclear sites as a 'violation of international law'. Blasting trade wars, the communique took aim at 'unilateral tariff…barriers' that 'flout WTO regulations'. One major theme at Rio was financial autonomy. Rio's leaders agreed to build out practical infrastructure for cross-border payments in local currencies and endorsed a BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative – an alternative to SWIFT – to make trade faster and safer within the bloc. The system, spearheaded by the New Development Bank (NDB), aims to interconnect national payment platforms so that goods can be settled directly in, say, rupees for goods from Brazil, or yuans for contracts with China. Climate justice and the Green South Climate change was another urgent focus, especially with Brazil hosting the upcoming COP30 climate conference. The BRICS ministers used Rio to outline a 'climate geopolitics' agenda grounded in justice and development. They insisted that environmental policy cannot be separated from social welfare. Another key demand was massive climate financing. BRICS leaders noted developed countries had pledged US$100 billion per year by 2020, but actual flows remain far below need. They cited data showing climate finance requirements have soared to about $1.3 trillion (due to worsening impacts), while only a fraction of that is funded. As Ethiopia's ambassador warned in Rio, the 2030 development goals were way off track, and 'only about 17% of the goals are on track'. His plea was blunt: rich countries caused the bulk of emissions since the Industrial Revolution, yet poor nations bear the worst consequences. The bloc cast climate change as a development and justice issue, not just an environmental problem. It demands that wealthier nations deliver on past commitments and scale them up dramatically. Looming behind all the summit talk was a critique of the existing financial order – in essence, an indictment of the Western-led model of capitalism. BRICS leaders and allied thinkers pointed out how that model has pitted developing countries on the losing end of debt, austerity and austerity. For many in the Global South, today's 'free market' prescriptions have brought crisis after crisis. Moreover, IMF and World Bank have compounded a 'polycrisis' of hunger, climate, and debt by imposing punitive conditions and surcharges on vulnerable countries. For example, the IMF's insistence on cutting subsidies or raising interest rates forced Egypt to quadruple bread prices, sparking unrest, even as the IMF simultaneously imposed 'junk fees' (surcharges) that extra-burdened already cash-strapped governments. The numbers are stark. Debt justice advocates note that over half of the world's poorest countries are now in debt crisis. Since 2013 the number of Global South nations on the verge of default has more than doubled. As of 2022, 54 countries were classified as facing unsustainable debt burdens. In these countries, interest payments are crowding out everything else, Recent research finds they now spend five times more on repaying creditors than on climate adaptation and resilience. In other words, money that could build hospitals or flood defence is siphoned off to foreign banks and bondholders. For instance, Pakistan, hit by devastating floods in 2022, was forced to divert billions from reconstruction to service external debt even as development benchmarks languished Tariffs and limits of coercion On the other, just as the declaration landed with a thud, US President Donald Trump, in a characteristically forceful social media post on 7 July 2025, declared, 'Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' On the same day, Trump dispatched his infamous tariff letters, thinly veiled as diplomatic overtures but steeped in unilateral belligerence as the outlines of a broader geopolitical reordering became visible. The letters, which rationalised arbitrary tariff hikes under the guise of 'reciprocity,' were less about trade and more about a desperate assertion of imperial prerogative. However, beneath the surface ran the unmistakable traces of failed coercion, faltering hegemony and the paranoid anxiety that BRICS was no longer merely an acronym, but a nascent counter-power. The breakdown of negotiations over the preceding three months exposed the fraying limits of American economic statecraft. The old instruments of leverage such as sanctions, tariffs and financial blackmail appeared to have fatigue, not fear. Trump's pivot from suspension to escalation in the China tariff war revealed a strategic cul-de-sac. Plagued by its own contradictions and upsetting its own allies, the administration alienated long-time partners while inadvertently catalysing an emerging geopolitical bloc rooted in the shared experience of imperial exclusion. The BRICS summit in Brazil unfolded against this backdrop. No longer the butt of Western punditry, the bloc has matured into a platform with infrastructural and political density. Ten full members, dozens of interested observers, and over fifty states engaged in formal and informal dialogue suggest a layered institutional emergence, rather than mere rhetorical alignment. Measured by purchasing power, BRICS economies account for nearly half of global GDP and over half of the global population. Their economic trajectories increasingly set the pace for global growth. The states also command vast shares of industrial production, energy reserves, agricultural capacity and critical minerals, locating them within the core of the material reproduction processes on which global stability depends. As the financial capital in the West remains long decoupled from productive investment, BRICS economies remain anchored in physical output and strategic sectors, grounded in systemic exchange value and deriving strength from infrastructure, energy and commodities rather than speculative cycles. The key difference is that energy in these economies is not a volatile asset class, but a prerequisite for sovereign development. Russia, Iran, Brazil, the UAE and Saudi Arabia dominate fossil fuel markets, while China leads in renewables and storage technologies. These capacities form the base of coordinated state-led planning. Unlike the credit-driven economies of the North Atlantic, where returns are chased through stock buybacks and asset bubbles, BRICS states engage in long-term provisioning. Economic derangement In the United States, financialisation has advanced to the point of economic derangement. Productive sectors have been hollowed out. Industrial investment lags behind speculative flows. Shareholder returns dictate policy. Decades of offshoring and deindustrialisation have produced sharp internal polarisation: real wages stagnate, infrastructure decays, and essential services become unaffordable for large sections of the population. On the global stage, the dollar functions less as a stabilising currency than as a mechanism of control. Washington's reliance on financial warfare – via sanctions, reserve freezes, and regulatory overreach –has exposed the fragility of this model. As volatility is offloaded onto the Global South, states have begun to seek institutional and monetary alternatives. However, the desire to delink is not ideological but comes from the structural asymmetries imposed by dollar dependency. Meanwhile, Europe grapples with its own, increasingly intertwined crises. The break from Russian energy has frayed the continent's industrial core. Politically, Europe appears unmoored. It invokes strategic autonomy while subordinating security policy to NATO. It speaks the language of multilateralism while confiscating foreign assets, invoking liberal peace while escalating militarisation and even remains silent as genocide and economic exploitations wreak havoc with its leadership staggeringly beholden to the US security umbrella. However, analysts note this is not a tactical misstep but a deeper crisis of orientation, with competing imperatives pulling the project apart. The intensification of Western hostility toward BRICS must be situated within this broader geopolitical fatigue. The confrontations are not limited to foreign policy disputes but reflect a deeper structural unease. Russia's assertion of resource sovereignty, Iran's defiance of financial blackmail and China's infrastructural ascendancy all constitute affronts to a global order increasingly unable to reproduce itself on its own terms. States that refuse to act as auxiliaries are subjected to diplomatic pressure and narrative containment. The postwar liberal consensus and its unipolar afterglow are no longer capable of securing ideological consent. Inflation, ecological crisis, inequality, and institutional fragmentation are not imported shocks; they are endogenous to the prevailing model. The externalisation of blame through sanctions and military build-ups only hastens systemic fragmentation. The BRICS configuration does not emerge from vacuum. It arises from decades of structural adjustment, resource plunder and financial dependency. Its institutional evolution – through the NDB, cross-border payment systems and currency swaps – offers both protective infrastructure and a set of alternatives. Similarly, local currency trade, infrastructure investment without neoliberal conditionalities and policy coordination on energy and technology signal a concerted attempt to reclaim developmental sovereignty. Countries across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia increasingly view BRICS+ as a strategic space to exit from the permanent austerity logic of Bretton Woods institutions. China, in this configuration, operates not as an imperial centre but as a strategic fulcrum. Its approach remains focused on connectivity, logistics and planning capacity. However, it is important to steer clear of the old post-Cold War shallow binaries: the 'authoritarian countries' in the BRICS are intending a reversal of globalisation but calling for a redirection. With their emphasis on real economy coordination, development financing and institutional redundancy, they are preparing for strategic insulation, not isolation. The bloc reflects a wider historical motion: a world disenchanted with liberal finance and searching for new instruments of survival and cooperation. The South is no longer a passive recipient in a preordained order. The architecture being assembled across BRICS states is uneven, unfinished and fraught, but undeniably real. The West can interpret this shift as a threat or a mirror. However, the historical momentum no longer centres on its crises. It centres elsewhere – in the slow, stubborn accumulation of material capacity outside the imperial core.
Express Tribune
7 hours ago
- Express Tribune
PM says govt committed to economic prosperity
Listen to article Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said the government was committed to completing a full economic turnaround through long-overdue reforms, structural changes and by prioritising meritocracy. Addressing a group of Pakistani students enrolled in leading global institutes and selected for the government's Uraan Pakistan Summer Scholars Internship Programme, the prime minister recalled that when his government took charge in 2023, Pakistan was on the brink of default and its fate was hanging in the balance. "The majority viewed that Pakistan would go into default while the minority thought that we will escape this disaster," he said, adding that he held marathon discussions with the IMF managing director and assured that Pakistan would not run into default and achieve the IMF programme. The prime minister said that at that period, the economy was in bad shape, with galloping inflation touching 38 percent while policy rate was hovering at 22.5 percent. The business atmosphere in the country was very skeptical. The prime minister, in his remarks, telecast on national TV channels, further said that they had the huge burden and onus to march in unison and work with sincerity of purpose to change the situation. The joint work paid dividends as now the policy rate was capped under 11 percent. The Uraan Pakistan programme had taken off, he added. "The road is very challenging as there were long overdue reforms, and the structural changes had not taken place in the last many decades," he observed, and stressed that Pakistan had to undertake these overdue long structural changes, through untiring and long efforts. He also referred to reforms and digitization of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and said that they had shown doors to the corrupt people without being influenced. To weed out corruption in FBR, he was very clear in his mind and took decisions which had never taken without heeding to a culture of any 'Sifarish', he added. The prime minister said that previously, digitization process in FBR was only confined to papers as no practical step was taken and blamed the corrupt and shrewd elements for hoodwinking the system. He said that it did not mean that there was dearth of hardworking and honest bureaucrats who were not given the chance, adding that they had brought forth the best people in FBR, including its chairman, and hired expert consultants. Now, he said digitization was the hallmark of FBR, where working had been converted from papers to multiple initiatives, including AI, and faceless interaction. Through enforcement of these measures, the revenue collection had risen from Rs12 billion to more than 50 billion rupees in one year, showing massive tax evasion in one sector alone, he maintained. The prime minister further emphasized "We have a long and thorny journey and facing mountain like impediments, but I assure that we will not shy away from discharging our duties in the service of the nation." He said that he believed in teamwork and never took credit for any achievement, adding that he saluted those who performed and sent those home who did not show well as "delivery is the name of the game; performance is the name of the game." Terming the economic challenges as difficult, he resolved that they would have to achieve the targets and if they did not, they would have to face the music. Underscoring the significance of country's youth, he said key of success of this country was in their hands and any expenditure on youth was akin to a future investment on the country. Later, responding to students' queries, he recollected that during his tenure as chief minister Punjab, his government had initiated scholarship programmes on merit to facilitate the deprived and poor students in the backward areas of the province. To another question, the prime minister said that due to climate change, Pakistan suffered a lot during 2022 floods, with economy faced $30 billion dollars losses, despite the fact that the country did not contribute a friction of percent in the global greenhouse effects. The prime minister, responding to a question, said that during the month of May, Pakistan faced India's uncalled aggression in the backdrop of Pahalgam incident. He said that he had offered a straight proposal to India to let this matter be investigated by the international bodies, but India never commented on this proposal. As result of Indian aggression, 55 Pakistanis were martyred and they responded in self defence by downing six Indian planes, he said, adding while on May 9 and 10, after India's attack, Pakistan responded with full might and taught the enemy a lesson. The prime minister praised the armed forces for showing their professional capabilities and courage, saying Pakistan won the conventional war. He maintained that Pakistan's nuclear programme was only meant for the peaceful purposes and for the self-defense. The prime minister expressed the hope that students would benefit from the Uraan Pakistan initiative and extended his best wishes for their future.
Business Recorder
9 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Finance Act 2025: Pakistan's auto industry grapples with enforcement challenges
ISLAMABAD: The auto industry is confused to deal with the enforcement of the Finance Act 2025 which has restricted ineligible persons from booking or purchasing motor vehicles from July 1, 2025. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Member Inland Revenue (Policy) has received a letter from Pakistan Automotive Manufactures Association (PAMA) seeking clarification on bar on Booking and Purchase of Motor Vehicles under the Finance Act 2025. According to the PAMA, refer to the subject matter regarding the enforcement of the new law under the Finance Act 2025, which restricts ineligible persons from booking or purchasing a motor vehicle. The law further mandates that any motor vehicle booked or purchased by such persons shall not be registered by the relevant authorities. In this regard, we request clarifications to facilitate the smooth transition and effective implementation of the new law: 'Localization transforming Pakistan's automotive industry' a) The process for determining eligibility remains unclear. Since the restriction applies at the booking stage—the initial step towards vehicle purchase—it implies that every prospective buyer must first obtain an eligibility certificate or similar approval from the competent authority before proceeding. b) As the eligibility certificate will be a crucial document, we request that the issuance mechanism be defined promptly to avoid delays in motor vehicles bookings. It is suggested that FBR consider developing an eligibility portal similar the filers portal. c) The definition of an eligible person under the Income Tax Law applies to individuals, companies, and associations of persons. This condition should not apply to purchases made by the Federal Government, Provincial Government, Local Government, Armed Forces and their related departments, Organisations, authorities, etc. As the new law has already come into effect from July 1, 2025, we anticipate delays in operational clarity. In the interim, we urge the government to consider allowing temporary bookings for waiting customers until requisite clarifications are issued. The association referred to section 114C (Restriction on economic transactions by certain persons), Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force, —(a) any application, by any ineligible person, for booking, purchase or registration of a motor vehicle of the value exceeding the threshold given in Fifteenth Schedule, shall not be accepted or processed by any manufacturer of a motor vehicle or vehicle registering authority of Excise and Taxation Department, as the case may be, the new section in the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 stated. The FBR's early attention and action to this matter will be highly appreciated, it added. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
