The Pakistan Development Review
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Regional Economic Integration in South Asia: The Way Forward
Get PDFLike many developing economies, the South Asian countries are
opening-up their economies with a view to accelerating their economic
growth through greater trade and investment. In this context, attempts
have also been made to encourage regional trade under the aegis of the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). In particular,
the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) provides for
reductions in tariffs and other restrictions on specific commodities on
a reciprocal basis, and the eventual objective is to integrate the South
Asian economies into a free trade area through SAFTA, which would come
into force on January 1, 2006. However, despite greater attention on
regional economic cooperation initiatives, there has been little
progress in regional trade expansion: intra-regional trade continues to
be minimal, not exceeding 5 percent of the total trade of the South
Asian economies. This paper highlights the importance of regional
economic integration in South Asia as elsewhere, spells out the factors
which have so far hampered economic cooperation in the region, and
outlines a future course of action to achieve greater economic
integration in South Asia. Section 2 provides a broad perspective on
regional economic integration with a particular focus on the need to
foster greater economic cooperation in South Asia. Section 3 discusses
the factors that have impeded intra-regional trade and economic ties
within the region. Section 4 spells out measures to enhance economic
cooperation in the SAARC region, while Section 5 concludes the
discussion
Globalisation and Pakistan’s Dilemma of Development (Distinguished Lecture)
No full textI open Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization
to a ‘local’ and a ‘global’ text, and am thereby led to argue that
problems of poverty, inequality, governance, corruption, transparency,
tolerance, growth and welfare, and more generally of justice and
freedom, be they economic or political, are not the monopoly or ward of
a particular region, packages to be pried open by the language of
economic theory alone. They rather demand an acknowledgement that an
economy is also a society, a polity, a community, a collectivity in
short; and a conceptual recognition by agents, albeit embodied with
their own needs and desires, that is correspondingly capacious. Thus, to
move beyond conception to fruition, theory, of necessity, can hardly
ignore values garnered from the past, ethics, and therefore texts, local
to the collectivity, that make its past come alive
Agricultural Terms of Trade in Pakistan: Issues of Profitability and Standard of Living of the Farmers
No full textIn the wake of the liberalised trade regime, Pakistan is
undergoing structural adjustments. At the heart of the adjustments is
liberalisation of markets and prices, including freeing the currency
market, reducing industrial protection, and introducing financial
austerity and macroeconomic stability. The agricultural sector is also
undergoing these changes, which include eliminating export taxes and
other trade restrictions and reducing producer subsidies (input and
output subsidies). Such changes in the sector are critical as
agriculture is the largest sector of Pakistan economy
Child Health and Poverty in Pakistan
Get PDFThis study examines the health status of Pakistani children
using two important indicators, morbidity and malnutrition measured by
weight-for-age and height-for-age. The demand for medical services has
also been determined. The main data source used in this study is the
2000-01 Pakistan Social-Economic Survey (PSES), which provides
sufficient information on child health and poverty. Findings of the
study show that both exclusive breastfeeding during the first 4-5 months
of life and immunisation can help control the occurrence of illness
significantly among the young children (0-5 months). These also
reinforce the role of mother’s education in the production of child
health (nutritional status). This role of mother’s education is found to
be more pronounced in the poor families than in the non-poor families.
The rise in poverty since the mid-1990s has adversely influenced the
nutritional status of children. The basic issue is about how to reduce
the household food insecurity. The benefits of recent high GDP growth
may be transferred to the poor through employment generation, which has
been slow in the past decade. Real incomes of the poor and the
vulnerable segments of the population may also be protected against the
rise in prices of essential food items. At present, the health and
nutrition sector is getting only 0.7 percent of the GDP. Health care
facilities in the country are curative in nature, and are heavily skewed
in favour of the diagnostic and treatment side, not preventive
healthcare aspects. More resources should be made available for
preventive healthcare aspects. Coverage of child immunisation should be
enhanced, and the provision of safe drinkingwater may be given high
priority in the social sector policies
Socio-economic Development, Population Policies, and Fertility Decline in Muslim Countries
Get PDFAs societies transform from a predominantly traditional to a
predominantly modern system, they tend to experience considerable
demographic changes. Coale (1984) notes that this “transformation is the
substitution of slow growth achieved with low fertility and mortality
for slow growth maintained with relatively high fertility and mortality
rates”. Demographic transition in Muslim countries is a fairly late
phenomenon as discussed in the next section. Most of these countries
have followed a similar trend as by many other developing countries.
According to the most recent estimate provided by The Economist
[September (2003)], the number of Muslims was 1.5 billion in 2003, of
which about 97 percent were living in Asian and African countries. About
one fourth were concentrated in South Asia and another one-fifth in the
Middle-East and North Africa (Arab countries). Figure 1 provides the
breakdown of Muslim population living in different regions of the World.
Percentage of population in major Muslim countries and their estimated
number at the beginning of the 21st Century are given in Table 1. Of 47
Muslim-majority countries, where more than 50 percent of the total
population is reported to be followers of Islam,1 36 have populations
that are more than 85 percent Muslims, while only seven of them contain
less than 70 percent Muslims. However, the six largest Muslim-majority
countries (in order, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey and
Egypt) contain about two-thirds of th
Estimating Long-run Trade Elasticities in Pakistan: A Cointegration Approach
Get PDFThe effects of devaluation or depreciation on the trade
balance of a country are usually examined by the Marshall-Lerner [ML]
condition, which states that if the sum of the absolute values of
imports and exports demand price elasticities is greater than one,
devaluation is expected to improve the trade balance of a country. Some
Structural Adjustment Reforms were started with the help of IMF and
World Bank in 1982-83 with the objective of improving the efficiency of
the economy by increasing the role of the private sector. The reforms
included the delinking of the Rupee from US dollar in January 1982,
price deregulation of a large number of products, denationalisation of
industry, imports liberalisation and export expansion [Khan (1994)]. The
successive governments have taken a number of steps to pursue an
extensive liberalisation of the trade regime in addition to taking a
number of export measures. Exchange and payment reforms were also
implemented [Pakistan (1991-92)]
Craig Burnside (ed.). Fiscal Sustainability in Theory and Practice: A Handbook. Washington, D. C.: World Bank. 2005. pp.xx+285. Price not given.
Get PDFFiscal sustainability is essential for economic growth and
comprises a set of fiscal policies that result in financial solvency
over the long run. As such, fiscal sustainability is the prime objective
of the World Bank’s Quality of Fiscal Adjustment Thematic Group (QFATG).
It is a main issue in developing countries. The articles compiled from
many journals here address fiscal sustainability analysis and the
practical work undertaken by the Bank’s Development Economic Research
Group (DECRG) or Poverty Reduction Economic Management undertaken by the
Economic Policy Group (PRMEG) and others. This book, basically a
combination of economic theory and practical methods of analysis,
provides a simple set of tools to assess a government’s budget and debt
position and is a comprehensive source of information on fiscal
sustainability. It describes the effects of business cycles on public
finance and examines the role of fiscal rule and currency crises and
their impact on fiscal sustainability. Some basic concepts are
explained, with solutions of complicated practical problems such as
contingent liabilities, external debt position, and fiscal
federalism
Regional (East-West/North-South) Cooperation and Peter Singer’s Ethics of Globalisation (The Mahbub-ul-Haq Memorial Lecture)
No full textI open Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization
to a ‘local’ and a ‘global’ text, and am thereby led to argue that
problems of poverty, inequality, governance, corruption, transparency,
tolerance, growth and welfare, and more generally of justice and
freedom, be they economic or political, are not the monopoly or ward of
a particular region, packages to be pried open by the language of
economic theory alone. They rather demand an acknowledgement that an
economy is also a society, a polity, a community, a collectivity in
short; and a conceptual recognition by agents, albeit embodied with
their own needs and desires, that is correspondingly capacious. Thus, to
move beyond conception to fruition, theory, of necessity, can hardly
ignore values garnered from the past, ethics, and therefore texts, local
to the collectivity, that make its past come alive
The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in a Comparative Perspective: the Case of Pakistan (Distinguished Lecture)
No full textThe paper compares and contrasts the situation of young people
in Pakistan with broader global trends drawing on data from both the
recent US National Research Council report, Growing up Global: the
Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries, and from the
national survey of adolescents and youth in Pakistan (AYP) 18 months
earlier [Sathar, et al. (2003)]. The paper begins with some demographic
background, and a discussion of how recent trends in schooling in
Pakistan compare with broader trends in all developing countries as a
group as well as in South Asia. It then follows the broad outlines of
the National Research Council’s report in exploring transitions to adult
work and family roles in a comparative perspective. The concluding
section of the paper draws on the NRC panel’s programme and policy
recommendations which were developed after a careful review of lessons
learned from recent policy research and programme intervention research
from around the world, all of which are relevant in some form in the
Pakistani context