u/NoUtimesinfinite

investment-to-GDP ratio, which averaged 18 per cent for nearly 40 years (1980s–2018), sharply fell from 17.2pc in 2018 to 15.5pc in 2019 in the very first year of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) ‘stabilisation’ programme, touching a historic low of 13.1pc of GDP in 2024. Meanwhile, FDI fell from 1pc to 0.5pc of GDP over the same period.

Pakistan’s ‘economic recovery’ is an average economic growth of 2.7pc since 2019 and two years of negative growth, compared with an average of 5.5pc during 2003-2018 period.

After dramatically reducing poverty from 64.3pc in 2001 to 21.9pc in 2018, it is now at about 25.3pc. using the World Bank’s international lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 per day (2017 PPP), nearly 45pc of Pakistan’s population falls below the poverty threshold

The country faces high levels of debt, with it skyrocketing from Rs29.9tr in 2018 to Rs. 95.5tr, partly due to rupee devaluation but mostly due to unduly high real interest rates

The real challenge lies in creating a policy environment that makes these opportunities commercially viable and attractive.

Army touts here claiming that stability at the loss of all liberties, rights and the complete destruction of democracy and rule of law was necessary, the ground economic reality shows that this govts actions have all been uninspiring and worsened the economic condition. No amount of groveling in front of Trump and even getting the west to cozy up to the dictator have flopped and capital and respurce flight out of the country keeps increasing while corrupt powers have been given free reign of this country. “Stability” has only meant keeping public funds open to govt and army missuse. The country meanwhile gets poorer and poorer while the rich enjoy your tax money.

My father and his few friends bought land near Monal Restaurant on the main road back in 2012. By 2022 valuation our share alone was worth around 8 crore rupees.

Then someone tried to grab it illegally. We filed a case. Worst decision we ever made.

The patw**i got together with CDA officers and local politicians and declared the land government allocated for a hospital. That hospital was never built. Someone just took the land and walked free.

We are Overseas Pakistanis. We fought this for 5 to 6 years from abroad. Lawyers, threats, Mental stress

The verdict in 2025? 20 lakh per kanal. Market rate was 1.6 crore per kanal in 2022 and has nearly doubled since.

I made a previous post about the house we bought too and that was its own nightmare.

I am sharing this because after seeing a lot of news about CDA cancelling houses that were illegally built. Where the hell was CDA when these societies were actively selling those houses?

Shortage in Sindh worsens to 39pc while Balochistan gets 71pc less flows

Punjab had reported only 2.1pc shortage on June 4, otherwise the province got surplus water invariably between 4.5pc and 6.7pc from June 1 to 5 (barring June 4).

The news has been highly censored in conventional media and digital media ran by army-controlled channels. Asim Munir has gone crazy again.

After Baloch, Pakhtuns, Punjabis and Kashmiris, only Sindhis remain yet to be controlled with brute force by Pakistan Army.

While govt keeps increasing taxes and petrol levys, here is how its patting itself on its back.

> despite financial constraints forcing development cuts in the name of IMF restrictions, the ECC meeting, presided over by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, also allowed Rs10bn additional funds for parliamentarians’ development schemes and expanded the scope of special honoraria running up to six-month additional salaries to more ministries and departments involved in federal budget preparations.

> The fiscal impact was not disclosed.

The land is worth Rs218 billion so fair rent would be about Rs4.36 billion a year. Under the government’s 2023 policy, clubs can pay a tenth of market rent, but this would still come to Rs400 million a year. The club pays Rs5000.

And who is the club for? Its rulebook answers. Every civil servant of Grade 18 and above may join for a token fee, and so may every commissioned officer of the armed forces. The other way to become a member is to inherit membership. The capture is not an accident of history. It is written into the founding charter. The roll of ordinary members, meanwhile, the club guards as confidential as if it were a list belonging to a Freemason Lodge.

Elite enclaves on public land
The Gymkhana is not the only refuge for the officer class in Lahore. Inside the GOR, that broad expanse of prime central land set aside for officialdom, stands the Punjab Civil Officers Mess on Tollington Road. At GOR’s gate stands the colonial Punjab Club. A short walk off, the Lahore Polo Club keeps its grounds and stables inside the Race Course, public parkland surrendered to horses and a handful of players. An exclusive school for the male heirs of the elite, Aitchison College (Chief’s College), spreads over 200 acres. None of these entities bought their land. It is public land, held in trust, enjoyed by the few.
Islamabad tells the same story more starkly. The Islamabad Club, sprawled across 352 acres of CDA land, pays about three rupees an acre a month as its gates remain closed to ordinary citizens. The Gun and Country Club rose up on land meant for the Pakistan Sports Board; the Supreme Court declared it illegal in 2018 and ordered the land to be taken back, yet years later auditors could not trace some 38 acres, and the club sat on roughly 37 with no deed, no lease, no licence at all. The court said it aloud: there was no land in Islamabad for a public hospital [for the poor], but there was land aplenty for clubs for the rich.
And the hunger has not eased. In Multan, the district administration moves to slice 15 acres off the Central Cotton Research Institute, founded in 1970, the cradle of more than forty cotton varieties, including the region’s first virus-free strain, to feed another gymkhana, while the country’s cotton reserves sit at a record low and we spend hard currency importing the very crop the institute exists to improve. The Pakistan Business Forum has written to the chief minister to stop it. The clubs took the parks. Now they reach into the seed bank.
There has been an attempt to quantify this. In 2021, the UNDP put a number on the privileges captured by Pakistan’s elite. Cheap land and capital, tax breaks and soft inputs came to about $17.4 billion a year, which is nearly 6pc of the whole economy.The Gymkhana is merely a place where one may stand and watch the transfer happen: a 112 acres, for Rs5000.

Two-tiered justice
The state can, of course, move on land with great speed if it wants. Take Islamabad, the capital that prides itself on order. For three months its bulldozers have flattened katchi abadis or the informal colonies where the city’s gardeners and nannies, washerwomen and labourers have lived for a generation.
Around 25,000 people were driven out of Mulism Colony in Bari Imam alone. Settlements a quarter-century old, Rimsha Colony in H-9 and the largely Christian Allama Iqbal Colony in G-7, were marked for the same fate, along with the ancient villages of Saidpur and Nurpur Shahan.The state’s housing policy counts 60 such settlements in the city, home to between 300,000 and half a million souls; the CDA recognises barely 10 as lawful and brands the rest squatters.
And here is the part that should silence the room: a Supreme Court order from 2015 was passed after the merciless clearance of the I-11 settlement left 25,000 people homeless. It stayed the summary evictions altogether. The bulldozers came regardless. The same legal system that cannot dislodge an unpaid colonial lease in 18 months had no trouble dislodging the poor in open defiance of its highest court.

The USTR said it determined that it would impose 10pc duties related to the forced labour investigation on imports from Canada, Ecuador, the EU, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Britain.

You know its a BS list since it has Canada, EU and Britain charged for “forced labor”. I guess his fav FM isn’t that favorable after all.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) fell by 31 per cent during the first 10 months of the current financial year, reflecting Pakistan’s continuing struggle to attract foreign investors.