According to recent reports of State bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan’s economic crisis does not seem to subside anytime soon even though it has jumped 28 positions on World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) ranking. Pakistan jumped from 136th rank to 108th rank while our neighbours, including China and India, also showed improvements in their EoDB rankings. Prime Minister Imran Khan also expressed satisfaction over this improvement in his tweet. Consequently, a layman will wonder if the business environment is improving, why are their financial woes not ending. They need to understand that WB’s EoDB index is calculated considering rules and regulations involved in starting a business, which include getting construction permits, access to electricity connection, paying taxes and other bureaucratic procedures. The less time these regulations take, the easier it is to do business. The current government has introduced few reforms, which have improved Pakistan’s ranking but the index solely tells about the laws written in black and white. It does not consider the actual economic activity being generated or to what extent these regulations are being followed. Perhaps, this is the reason India’s ranking has also improved amid its worst economic slowdown in decades. One of the most talked-about economic indicators is inflation. It is, no doubt, the vicious economic illness, which needs to be cured, or the whole economic system will crumble down to pieces. The SBP reported that non-food inflation rate had increased from 7.7 per cent in September 2018 to 11.4 per cent in September 2019. However, more alarming was the rate of food inflation, which increased from 1.3 per cent in September 2018 to 14.3 per cent in 2019. Increasing custom duty on luxury items to encourage people to buy local products or to spend less on luxury items is a part of the austerity drive that this government pledged to take. But inflicting poor with double-digit food inflation shows outright incompetence of the people devising economic policies. Inflation is no doubt, the vicious economic illness, which needs to be cured, or the whole economic system will crumble down to pieces The report also provided inflation rates according to income groups, which start from PKR 8,000 (defined as extreme poverty, according to WB’s definition of less than USD 1.90 per day) to PKR 35,000. Households with a monthly income of up to PKR 8,000 are facing 15.1 per cent of food inflation as compared to 0.3 per cent food inflation during the same month of the last year. Non-food inflation for this income group is 8.9 per cent in September 2019. The top income group that is defined as the household with monthly earnings of PKR 35000 PKR and above, is facing 13.7 per cent food inflation and 12.2 per cent non-food inflation. What’s disturbing about these figures is that the poor people who fight for survival daily have to bear the most. Their consumption basket consists of mostly food items and with the predicted inflation rate to remain in the range of 11 to 12 per cent in FY20, they would be worse off. Being over-optimistic, SBP mentioned that the lagged impact of stabilisation measures will reduce inflation significantly in FY21. However, it did not mention what kind of stabilisation measures would have the intended effect and through which channel they will reduce the general price level. 24 per cent of the population living below the poverty line means that 24 per cent of the population belongs to households earning less than PKR 8000 per month. With a double-digit and rising inflation, their purchasing power will further decline, which will exacerbate the situation. The government cannot keep blaming the previous governments for this economic mess. It needs to own these problems and devise policies that do not burden the poor. Agriculture reforms can also help in this regard. Seed and fertiliser quality needs to be improved. The government should set up training centres for farmers where they can learn modern farming methods because a modern agriculture sector is imperative to obtain higher crop yield. Avoid late sowing of wheat by using short-duration varieties of cotton and rice. Improving agriculture product will contribute positively towards GDP as it has a 24 per cent share in it. However, the government cannot solely rely on agriculture growth for overall economic growth in the country. Countries with the highest share of agriculture in GDP are mostly the top poor countries in the world, such as Sierra Leone, Chad, Mali and Liberia. All developed countries have achieved higher growth levels by implementing more dynamic policies for their industrial and services sector. Thus, Pakistan should look for a holistic approach to economic development that takes into account all participants and far-reaching objectives. The writer is a PhD scholar at University of Bremen, Germany