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1 Tough times: A Pakistani economist claims that 80% of Pakistani families are spending roughly 80% of their incomes on food. Reuters
Tilak Devasher
Member, National Security Advisory Board
Earlier this month, while responding to people’s telephone calls, Imran Khan claimed, inter alia, that Pakistan’s major economic indicators were moving in a positive direction and painted a rosy picture of the country. What overshadowed his comments were, of course, the highly misogynist comments blaming women for getting raped. The reality of Pakistan and Imran Khan’s report card so far are, however, quite different as a series of recently released reports indicate.
Other democracies need to take a cue from the UK’s decision to place Pakistan on its Terror Financing list
Other democracies need to take a cue from the UK’s decision to place Pakistan on its Terror Financing list
Sun Online Desk
17th April, 2021 07:10:49
Last Sunday’s decision of the government of the United Kingdom (UK) to place Pakistan on its newly drawn-up list of high-risk countries for terror financing and money laundering ought to trigger a long overdue awakening in other like-minded democracies to the need to completely neutralize the threats posed by the terrorists nurseries that Pakistan has nurtured quite liberally for decades, and which it continues to bankroll. If any further encouragement should be required to nudge fence-sitting nations into following a route similar to that taken by the UK, a brief consultation with the French government could, at least in the immediate term, provide the tipping point.
Pakistan’s elite slicing away $17.4 bn in perks: UNDP
Sun Online Desk
17th April, 2021 03:38:04
Economic privileges accorded to Pakistan’s elite groups, including the corporate sector, feudal landlords, the political class and the country’s powerful military, add up to an estimated $17.4 bn, or roughly 6 percent of the country’s economy, a new United Nations report has found.
Released last week, the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) National Human Development Report (NHDR) for Pakistan focuses on issues of inequality in the South Asian country of 220 million people. “Powerful groups use their privilege to capture more than their fair share, people perpetuate structural discrimination through prejudice against others based on social characteristics, and policies are often unsuccessful at addressing the resulting inequity, or may even contribute to it,” says the report.
Economic inequality
Editorial
April 17, 2021
Economic inequality has always prevailed in human society in one form or the other. However, since the process of globalisation set in motion in the recent past, the balance has been tilting more and more in favour of the rich, resulting in an ever-widening gulf between the haves and have-nots. Now the number of poor worldwide has increased to unheard of levels, making it increasingly difficult for those at lower rungs of income to access even essential for survival.
At present, 1% of the world’s population owns 40% of its economic resources. The increasing economic inequality is, however, more pronounced in Third World countries than ever before. The UNDP’s latest National Human Development Report places Pakistan’s powerful elite in an uncomfortable moral dilemma as it says this class has cornered economic privileges amounting to $17.4 billion or 6% of GDP. The beneficiaries of the lop-sided distribution of the national wealth
Top Story
April 15, 2021
ISLAMABAD: Economic privileges accorded to Pakistan’s elite groups, including the corporate sector, feudal landlords, the political class and the country’s powerful military, add up to an estimated $17.4 bn, or roughly 6 percent of the country’s economy, a new United Nations report has found.
Released last week, the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) National Human Development Report (NHDR) for Pakistan focuses on issues of inequality in the South Asian country of 220 million people. “Powerful groups use their privilege to capture more than their fair share, people perpetuate structural discrimination through prejudice against others based on social characteristics, and policies are often unsuccessful at addressing the resulting inequity, or may even contribute to it,” says the report.