Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion In the summer of 2022, one-third of Pakistan was submerged. The floods that swept through Balochistan, Sindh, southern Punjab, and parts of KPK were not merely a weather event. They were a climate event — the product of…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion Pakistani governments of every political stripe have, at some point in their tenure, expressed the aspiration to build a knowledge economy. The phrase appears in vision documents, budget speeches, policy frameworks, and press conferences with a frequency that…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion Pakistan’s public health expenditure — the amount the government spends from public funds on the health of its 220 million citizens — has hovered between 1% and 1.2% of GDP for most of the past decade. The WHO…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion When Pakistan’s current account is in deficit, when foreign exchange reserves are dangerously low, when the IMF is the lender of last resort, there is one constant that prevents the economic situation from moving from crisis to catastrophe:…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion Approximately 64% of Pakistan’s population is under the age of 30. Every month, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Pakistanis reach working age. The demographic bulge that economists and development agencies have been identifying as a potential dividend…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion Pakistan spends more on subsidies than it does on development. In a country where 220 million people live with chronic infrastructure deficits, education quality crises, and a healthcare system that bankrupts families, the federal government allocates billions of…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion Pakistan’s tax-to-GDP ratio — hovering around 9–10% of GDP across the past decade — is among the lowest in the world for an economy of its size and complexity. Egypt’s tax-to-GDP ratio is approximately 14%. Turkey’s is approximately…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion When China established its first Special Economic Zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, and Xiamen in 1980, the ambition was explicit and the execution was formidable. Within a decade, Shenzhen had transformed from a fishing village to a manufacturing…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion In the early 2000s, Pakistan’s merchandise exports stood at approximately $9 billion. By the mid-2020s, they stand at approximately $27–30 billion. In nominal terms, that represents a tripling. In real terms — adjusted for global price inflation across…
Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion In 2021, the State Bank of Pakistan launched Raast — an instant payment system enabling person-to-person transfers, bill payments, and merchant transactions through a central interoperable infrastructure. In the same period, JazzCash and Easypaisa — the two dominant…