I had previously open a topic Pakistani economy under Musharraf.

Link

Now I am opening this topic Pakistani Economy under Nawaz and Asif.

Everyone is welcome to contribute.

It has been 60 days since the government has been in power.

My questions is that What have they done so far for Pakistan ???

I am giving all Pro convict Nawaz Sharif and Pro Asif Ali Zardari people a head start. Make use of it.

52 views and not a single post ? Do guys have nothing to show ?

Let me start with one.

Karachi Stock Exchange that was one of the world's best performers during Musharraf is now one of the worl'd worst performers in the world. It seems to be heading south from where it was revived by Shaukat Aziz.

Remember. This is a comparison thread involving figures. No political gossip please.

Come on. I am giving all a head start before I start off with my figures.

Present government must have done something for Pakistan that is better then what Musharaf did for Pakistan economically ???

Pakistan's Prices Rise at Fastest Pace in 30 Years (Update2)
By Farhan SharifLink

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's consumer prices rose at the fastest pace in at least 30 years in May as food costs jumped and record government borrowing to fund a widening budget deficit flooded the economy with cash.

Inflation in South Asia's second-largest economy accelerated to 19.27 percent from 17.2 percent in April, the Federal Bureau of Statistics said in Islamabad today. Prices rose 2.69 percent in May from the previous month.

``Inflationary pressures are being fuelled by the large build up of monetary assets on account of heavy government budgetary borrowing,'' said Sayem Ali, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in Karachi. ``An expansionary fiscal stance will lead to continued buildup of inflation pressures.''

The government has been relying on loans from the State Bank of Pakistan to fund its budget shortfall, which Finance Minister Naveed Qamar yesterday said reached a 10-year high of about 7 percent of gross domestic product in the 12 months to June 30. The central bank last week said that borrowing trend ``cannot be sustained'' without further stoking inflation.

Governor Shamshad Akhtar on May 23 raised the central bank's benchmark interest rate for a second time this year, increasing borrowing costs to 12 percent from 10.5 percent.

``We are spending today more than we can afford,'' Akhtar said after the unexpected rate rise. Government borrowings this fiscal year had already reached a ``very high'' level of 9 percent of GDP, she added.

`Excess Liquidity'

The State Bank of Pakistan lent the government 551 billion rupees ($8.2 billion) from July 1 through May 10 to finance its deficit, twice the amount borrowed during the preceding three years, according to central bank estimates.

``Record rates of debt monetization by the Finance Ministry has contributed to excess liquidity in the system,'' said Zainab Jabbar, an analyst at IGI Securities in Karachi. ``With inflation on the uptick, the government should have anticipated further monetary tightening in 2008 and consequently striven to tighten its belt rather than indulge in fiscal loosening.''

Pakistan's first civilian government since a 1999 military coup says it wants to narrow the budget deficit to 4.7 percent of GDP next fiscal year, even as the administration is expected to today announce an increase in salaries for civil servants and more handouts to the poor.

Rice, Potatoes

Prices for food and beverages surged 28.48 percent in May from a year earlier, according to today's report. That was the fastest pace in at least 15 years, according to data compiled by JS Global Capital Ltd. in Karachi. The price of rice increased 35.82 percent and the cost off potatoes was 28.26 higher than a year earlier.

``It seems the government is not fully passing on international fuel price rises in order to avoid immediate inflationary and political pressure,'' said Farhan Rizvi, an economist at JS Global Capital.

Pakistan, which imports about 85 percent of the oil it uses, increased prices of gasoline for the first time in more than 22 months on Feb. 29 after record crude prices increased import costs for the nation's refiners. Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority, the regulator, has since raised prices three more times.

The trade deficit widened to $1.9 billion in May from $1.1 billion because of the rising oil import bill, the statistics bureau said yesterday.

Pakistan's two-month-old government has fractured after former premier Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and the party's nine ministers quit the cabinet in a dispute over the reinstatement of judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf last year. Sharif agreed to share power with the Pakistan Peoples Party of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto after parliamentary elections in February.

To contact the reporter on this story: Farhan Sharif in Karachi at fsharif2@bloomberg.net.

Well its to early to say anything and you know the situation in Pakistan atm. Give them a chance and see. We gave MUsharaf 10 years so let them give a year or 2.

You mean give them time until there is absolutely no economy left?? 1 or 2 years, bhai I'm guessing they wont last the next 6 months.

Pakistan's economy
Stopping the rot
Jun 12th 2008 | LAHORE
From The Economist print edition

Just like the bad old days
The Long march to ruin

BRIGHTLY painted Tata lorries, laden with sacks of onions, wait in the noon heat at the Wagah border post between India and Pakistan. Once past customs, the onions will go on to Lahore and beyond. But the lorries must turn back. Their produce is laboriously loaded onto smaller vans, driven by locals.

Pakistan's costly imports of food ($3.5 billion in the first ten months of this fiscal year, which ends on June 30th), fertiliser ($823m) and fuel (over $8.6 billion) may pull the economic rug from under its newly installed government, which presented its first budget, belatedly, on June 11th. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the central bank, reckons the country's current-account deficit might reach 7.8% of GDP this fiscal year, its highest ever (see chart). Growth has slowed to 5.8%, inflation has quickened to over 19% and the government's budget deficit, at about 7% of GDP, is the highest in ten years.

Such macroeconomic disarray will be familiar to the coalition government led by the Pakistan People's Party of Asif Zardari, and to Nawaz Sharif, whose party provides it “outside support”. Before Mr Sharif was ousted in 1999, the two parties had presided over a decade of corruption and mismanagement. But since then, as the IMF remarked in a report in January, there has been a transformation. Pakistan attracted over $5 billion in foreign direct investment in the 2006-07 fiscal year, ten times the figure of 2000-01. The government's debt fell from 68% of GDP in 2003-04 to less than 55% in 2006-07, and its foreign-exchange reserves reached $16.4 billion as recently as in October.

But in the months since, the turnaround economy has threatened to turn full circle. The political turmoil that followed President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency in November and Benazir Bhutto's assassination in December is not wholly to blame. Pricey fertiliser and April hailstorms hurt the wheat harvest. The mealy bug and other afflictions cost about 16% of the cotton crop, which in turn hurt the textile industry. And over 27% of Pakistan's higher import bill was due to the spike in oil prices alone.

But all this made it a bad moment for Pakistan to spook foreign investors with its wobbly politics.They bought just $97m-worth of shares in the first ten months of this fiscal year, compared with over $1.5 billion in the same period a year earlier. Reluctant to test the foreigners' appetite for its securities, the government has turned to the charity of multilateral lenders and friendly governments. Pakistan also received over $5.3 billion in remittances from migrant workers in the ten months to April, half of it from the Gulf.

Mr Zardari has recently returned from a pilgrimage-cum-begging mission in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom reportedly agreed to defer charges on some of the 250,000 barrels of oil it sells Pakistan each year. This forbearance comes on top of a $300m handout to the government.

What will his government do with this money? Its new budget aims to narrow its fiscal deficit to 4.7% of GDP, based on an optimistic forecast of revenues. It will raise sales taxes across the board and impose heavy duties on luxury items such as perfume and chocolate. It has resolved to “prune” the “unbearable” subsidies, mostly of fuel and electricity, which now consume one-fifth of its budget, promising instead to give poor households 1,000 rupees ($15) a month in cash. The scheme will be named the “Benazir programme”, lest the beneficiaries forget which party to thank. The budget's allocation to the army was less in real terms than it was last year. But even as it spends less on guns, it promises to spend more on soldiers, raising their pay by 20% along with that of every other federal employee. Other expenses on the bureaucracy, however, are to be frozen: civil servants will have to forgo their new cars and air-conditioners.

As the finance minister unveiled his plans, Pakistan's lawyers began their “long march” to Islamabad, demanding Mr Musharraf's removal and the reinstatement of the senior judges he sacked last year. On June 7th Mr Musharraf told the press that he was not about to leave his post or the country. He will know when to quit, he said. He will not sit around like a useless vegetable, or like the onions waiting to cross the border at Wagah.



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