The global economy is undergoing one of its most significant transformations since the rise of globalization in the 1990s. For decades, businesses pursued efficiency above all else, shifting production to wherever costs were lowest. China emerged as the undisputed factory of the world, producing everything from smartphones and solar panels to automobiles and industrial machinery. […]
Pakistan’s Real Economic Crisis – It’s Elite Capture
For decades, Pakistan’s economic discourse has revolved around familiar explanations: foreign debt, IMF conditionalities, fiscal deficits, declining exports, political instability, and external shocks. While all of these factors undoubtedly play a role, they often obscure a far more fundamental reality. Pakistan’s greatest economic challenge is not a lack of resources; it is the systematic concentration […]
From IPPs to Wheat Procurement: Is Pakistan Building Another Economic Trap?
Pakistan today finds itself trapped in a dangerous economic vortex where the state is attempting to increase revenue by placing ever-growing pressure on the economy, while the economy itself continues to shrink under that very burden. Industries are shutting down, employment opportunities are shrinking, consumption is falling, and consequently, the tax base itself is collapsing. […]
The Rise of the Petro-Yuan: A Structural Shift in the Global Financial Order
The global financial system is entering a moment of quiet but profound transformation. For over five decades, the petrodollar system-anchored in U.S.-Saudi agreements of the 1970s-has underwritten American monetary dominance, ensuring that oil, the world’s most strategic commodity, is traded almost exclusively in U.S. dollars. Yet, in a post-U.S.-Iran confrontation era-marked by geopolitical fragmentation, sanctions […]
War, Markets, and Survival
As tensions between the United States and Iran intensify, global markets are beginning to exhibit a familiar but dangerous pattern: volatility without clarity. Gold and silver-traditionally considered safe havens-are falling. Oil is oscillating near critical resistance levels. Technical signals are flashing opportunities, yet seasoned investors are hesitating. This is not irrational behavior. It is a […]
AI, Automation, and the New Global Divide
The world has entered a moment where algorithms quietly decide which ships dock first, which factories scale fastest, and which workers are left scrambling to catch up. Artificial intelligence and automation are no longer futuristic concepts debated in academic circles-they are active forces reshaping global trade, productivity, and power. The real question confronting policymakers today […]
Are Regional Blocs Replacing Globalisation?
For nearly three decades, globalisation was treated as an inevitability – a one-way street paved by falling tariffs, global supply chains, and the promise that economic interdependence would tame geopolitics. Today, that assumption looks increasingly fragile. Trade routes are being redrawn, alliances recalibrated, and economic trust is becoming conditional. The world is not de-globalising in […]
From Consumption to Capability
In Lahore, Dhaka, or any fast-growing city of the Global South, the story of “growth” is often narrated through the lens of consumption: the new motorbike on instalments, the crowded malls on weekends, the rising imports of phones and fuel, and the political temptation to keep demand running-whatever the fiscal or external cost. It is […]
Natural Shocks, Climate Risk and Economic Planning
Pakistan’s economic story increasingly reads like a tale of two futures-one imagined through policy papers, growth frameworks and reform agendas, and another written brutally across its landscapes by climate change. Today, the latter is winning. In 2022, the floods that submerged a third of the country inflicted more than USD 30 billion in economic losses […]
Demographic Decline, Ageing Populations and the Future of Growth
Whenever I speak to policymakers or business leaders today, I notice an uncomfortable silence when the topic of demographics comes up. Not because it is abstract, but because it is terrifyingly real. For decades, we assumed the world would remain young, productive, and constantly expanding. But today, the world’s demographic engine-the very foundation on which […]