Pakistan’s demographic dividend conundrum and government choices on May 25, 2021‘Pakistan is moving through a substantial demographic dividend’ is a ‘tag line’ attached to almost every policy or strategy paper written on Pakistan over the last two decades. More recently though, the catch phrase ‘embarking onto the knowledge based economy’ is becoming equally repetitive. The country has an exceptionally young population with 63% population under […]
Property Tax: Is it about Governance or Politics? on March 14, 2021Property tax is substantially under-utilized instrument in Pakistan and Punjab is no exception. The contribution of property taxation to overall provincial tax receipts in Punjab is just 6% or just under PKR 14 billion, which is nowhere close to the potential of a province that house 110 million people residing in close to 15 million […]
Towards a More Innovative, Effective and Enabling Provincial Sales Tax Regime on January 23, 2021In line with spirit of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan the collection of provincial sales tax on services was devolved to the provinces and revenue authorities were established in all four provinces. The devolution of sales tax on services was made with the prime objective for provinces to raise own source revenue […]
Placing the Common Good before the Private Good: COVID-19 in Pakistan on August 17, 2020The common catchphrases these days may be ‘uncertainty’, ‘resilience’ or ‘chimerical’ but the losses due to COVID-19 including that of human lives and economic assets are ‘very real’. The COVID-19 pandemic buffeted economies and economic sectors across the globe without exception, with estimates showing global GDP contracting by 5.2% and World Trade Organisation predicting up […]