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중도 성향
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Launch HN: Intuned (YC S22) – Build and run reliable browser automations as code
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"S22" · 총 10건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 88,375건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.2(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,535건(5.1%)·중립 81,636건(92.4%)·부정 2,204건(2.5%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 15.3(중도 균형)입니다.
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• Only Rs1.13tr allocated to PSDP against Rs4.1tr requirement; minister terms shortfall ‘new circular debt crisis’ • Record Rs4.715tr development plan unveiled • APCC resolves to divert resources to ongoing projects ISLAMABAD: Under tight International Monetary Fund (IMF) oversight, the government has trimmed allocations for most sectors in the next federal development programme to create additional fiscal space for the PML-N’s trademark national highways, a new Rs87 billion share for coalition partners and a Rs70bn allocation for ruling party lawmakers’ schemes. Yet, the Annual Plan Coordination Committee, led by Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal, on Monday unveiled a record national development programme of Rs4.715 trillion, made possible by an unprecedented 27pc hike in development allocations by state-owned entities and a 10pc rise in provincial allocations to an all-time high of Rs3.138tr. The overall Rs4.715tr development portfolio comprises the largest share of provincial annual development plans (ADPs) at Rs3.138tr (up 9.6pc), followed by the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) of Rs1.126tr, up 12.6pc from the current year, and Rs451bn from SOEs, up 27pc from Rs355bn in the current fiscal year. However, the federal PSDP allocation of Rs1.126tr for next year disappointed the planning minister, who described it as “a new circular debt crisis”, with almost Rs11tr in throw-forward liabilities from around 800 ongoing projects that would be impossible to complete over the next decade. He said he had requested the prime minister for a minimum allocation of Rs2.9tr for development next year against actual requirements of Rs4.1tr, but the Ministry of Finance could spare only Rs1.126tr owing to IMF restrictions. Mr Iqbal said development projects had come to a standstill over the past eight years after record development investments between 2013 and 2018. He said it should be a matter of shame that the country continued to celebrate raising foreign debt and issuing bonds to service liabilities instead of supporting export growth to finance national development and social welfare needs. Even within the constrained PSDP allocation of Rs1.126tr, which includes Rs267bn in foreign assistance, about Rs125bn pertains to the N-25 highway in Balochistan, for which the prime minister had separately imposed an additional Rs10 per litre levy on petroleum products. This effectively leaves the PSDP size at Rs1.001tr — almost unchanged from the current year’s Rs1tr allocation, which was later reduced to Rs836bn to partially finance the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The government has allocated Rs264bn for national highways next year, up 18.4pc from Rs223bn in the current fiscal year, while the power sector has been earmarked Rs91bn, almost unchanged from this year’s Rs90.8bn. The planning minister told the APCC that after allocating Rs87bn for coalition partners, Rs70bn for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Achievement Programme, Rs100bn for Balochistan projects excluding the N-25, and Rs153bn for AJK, GB and the newly-merged districts of KP, the actual PSDP allocation drops to a “disgraceful” Rs591bn. After meeting the Rs426bn rupee-cover requirement for foreign-funded projects, only Rs165bn remains available for other ongoing schemes. The Rs3.138tr provincial development outlay is led by Punjab, which has allocated Rs1.450tr (46pc) for next year, up 17pc. Sindh follows with a relatively restrained development allocation of Rs816bn compared to Rs887bn in the current fiscal year, a decline of 8pc. KP has proposed a development envelope of Rs564bn for next year, up almost 24pc from Rs455bn in the current year. In addition to substantial federal allocations, Balochistan has increased its ADP size to Rs308bn, up 10pc from Rs279bn this year. Based on these financial envelopes, the government has set next year’s economic growth target at 4pc, supported by projected growth of 3.8pc in agriculture, 4pc in industry and 4.2pc in services. Inflation is targeted at 8.2pc. Given the tight fiscal position, the APCC decided to make limited allocations, focusing on strategic and high-impact projects, ensuring adequate rupee cover for foreign-funded schemes to honour international obligations, prioritising projects with more than 70pc completion for early execution, avoiding token allocations, restricting new projects except those aimed at enhancing productivity, and discouraging projects of a provincial nature except in less-developed areas. The sector-wise breakdown shows that the largest share — Rs729.9bn, or 65pc — has been earmarked for infrastructure projects, compared to Rs615bn budgeted in the current fiscal year, an increase of 19pc. Within infrastructure, transport and communications receive the highest allocation at Rs409bn (36pc), compared to Rs326bn in the current year, up 25pc. This is followed by water resources at Rs140bn (12.5pc), energy at Rs136bn (12pc), and physical planning and housing at Rs45bn (4pc). The social sector has been allocated Rs187.2bn (16.6pc), including education (7pc), health (2.2pc), the SDGs Achievement Programme (6.2pc) and other social sectors (1.3pc). To help less-developed regions catch up with the rest of the country, Rs54.1bn (4.8pc) has been earmarked for AJK, GB and the newly merged districts of KP. The science, technology and information technology sector has been allocated Rs45bn (4pc), while governance and production sectors have been allocated Rs10.2bn and 0.8pc of the PSDP, respectively. Iqbal lamented that the country was operating with an extremely reduced PSDP at a time when development needs were rising sharply. He said development space had been squeezed by mounting debt-servicing pressures, prolonged macroeconomic stress and worsening global headwinds. PSDP allocations, he noted, stood at 19.6pc of the national budget and 2.5pc of GDP in FY18, but had fallen to just 4pc of the budget and 0.6pc of GDP by 2025-26. “The PSDP is not merely a budget line — it is a statement of national intent,” the minister said, stressing that development funding was directly linked to economic growth, national productivity and public welfare. He warned that Pakistan was still struggling to recover from the post-2018 economic shock, with debt servicing burdens and recurring external vulnerabilities limiting the country’s ability to invest in transformative projects. Given the limited fiscal space, the APCC decided that more than 98pc of available resources would be directed towards ongoing projects, with priority accorded to high-impact and near-completion schemes, particularly in water, energy, transport and other core infrastructure sectors. Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2026
• Only Rs1.13tr allocated to PSDP against Rs4.1tr requirement; minister terms shortfall ‘new circular debt crisis’ • Record Rs4.715tr development plan unveiled • APCC resolves to divert resources to ongoing projects ISLAMABAD: Under tight International Monetary Fund (IMF) oversight, the government has trimmed allocations for most sectors in the next federal development programme to create additional fiscal space for the PML-N’s trademark national highways, a new Rs87 billion share for coalition partners and a Rs70bn allocation for ruling party lawmakers’ schemes. Yet, the Annual Plan Coordination Committee, led by Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal, on Monday unveiled a record national development programme of Rs4.715 trillion, made possible by an unprecedented 27pc hike in development allocations by state-owned entities and a 10pc rise in provincial allocations to an all-time high of Rs3.138tr. The overall Rs4.715tr development portfolio comprises the largest share of provincial annual development plans (ADPs) at Rs3.138tr (up 9.6pc), followed by the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) of Rs1.126tr, up 12.6pc from the current year, and Rs451bn from SOEs, up 27pc from Rs355bn in the current fiscal year. However, the federal PSDP allocation of Rs1.126tr for next year disappointed the planning minister, who described it as “a new circular debt crisis”, with almost Rs11tr in throw-forward liabilities from around 800 ongoing projects that would be impossible to complete over the next decade. He said he had requested the prime minister for a minimum allocation of Rs2.9tr for development next year against actual requirements of Rs4.1tr, but the Ministry of Finance could spare only Rs1.126tr owing to IMF restrictions. Mr Iqbal said development projects had come to a standstill over the past eight years after record development investments between 2013 and 2018. He said it should be a matter of shame that the country continued to celebrate raising foreign debt and issuing bonds to service liabilities instead of supporting export growth to finance national development and social welfare needs. Even within the constrained PSDP allocation of Rs1.126tr, which includes Rs267bn in foreign assistance, about Rs125bn pertains to the N-25 highway in Balochistan, for which the prime minister had separately imposed an additional Rs10 per litre levy on petroleum products. This effectively leaves the PSDP size at Rs1.001tr — almost unchanged from the current year’s Rs1tr allocation, which was later reduced to Rs836bn to partially finance the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The government has allocated Rs264bn for national highways next year, up 18.4pc from Rs223bn in the current fiscal year, while the power sector has been earmarked Rs91bn, almost unchanged from this year’s Rs90.8bn. The planning minister told the APCC that after allocating Rs87bn for coalition partners, Rs70bn for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Achievement Programme, Rs100bn for Balochistan projects excluding the N-25, and Rs153bn for AJK, GB and the newly-merged districts of KP, the actual PSDP allocation drops to a “disgraceful” Rs591bn. After meeting the Rs426bn rupee-cover requirement for foreign-funded projects, only Rs165bn remains available for other ongoing schemes. The Rs3.138tr provincial development outlay is led by Punjab, which has allocated Rs1.450tr (46pc) for next year, up 17pc. Sindh follows with a relatively restrained development allocation of Rs816bn compared to Rs887bn in the current fiscal year, a decline of 8pc. KP has proposed a development envelope of Rs564bn for next year, up almost 24pc from Rs455bn in the current year. In addition to substantial federal allocations, Balochistan has increased its ADP size to Rs308bn, up 10pc from Rs279bn this year. Based on these financial envelopes, the government has set next year’s economic growth target at 4pc, supported by projected growth of 3.8pc in agriculture, 4pc in industry and 4.2pc in services. Inflation is targeted at 8.2pc. Given the tight fiscal position, the APCC decided to make limited allocations, focusing on strategic and high-impact projects, ensuring adequate rupee cover for foreign-funded schemes to honour international obligations, prioritising projects with more than 70pc completion for early execution, avoiding token allocations, restricting new projects except those aimed at enhancing productivity, and discouraging projects of a provincial nature except in less-developed areas. The sector-wise breakdown shows that the largest share — Rs729.9bn, or 65pc — has been earmarked for infrastructure projects, compared to Rs615bn budgeted in the current fiscal year, an increase of 19pc. Within infrastructure, transport and communications receive the highest allocation at Rs409bn (36pc), compared to Rs326bn in the current year, up 25pc. This is followed by water resources at Rs140bn (12.5pc), energy at Rs136bn (12pc), and physical planning and housing at Rs45bn (4pc). The social sector has been allocated Rs187.2bn (16.6pc), including education (7pc), health (2.2pc), the SDGs Achievement Programme (6.2pc) and other social sectors (1.3pc). To help less-developed regions catch up with the rest of the country, Rs54.1bn (4.8pc) has been earmarked for AJK, GB and the newly merged districts of KP. The science, technology and information technology sector has been allocated Rs45bn (4pc), while governance and production sectors have been allocated Rs10.2bn and 0.8pc of the PSDP, respectively. Iqbal lamented that the country was operating with an extremely reduced PSDP at a time when development needs were rising sharply. He said development space had been squeezed by mounting debt-servicing pressures, prolonged macroeconomic stress and worsening global headwinds. PSDP allocations, he noted, stood at 19.6pc of the national budget and 2.5pc of GDP in FY18, but had fallen to just 4pc of the budget and 0.6pc of GDP by 2025-26. “The PSDP is not merely a budget line — it is a statement of national intent,” the minister said, stressing that development funding was directly linked to economic growth, national productivity and public welfare. He warned that Pakistan was still struggling to recover from the post-2018 economic shock, with debt servicing burdens and recurring external vulnerabilities limiting the country’s ability to invest in transformative projects. Given the limited fiscal space, the APCC decided that more than 98pc of available resources would be directed towards ongoing projects, with priority accorded to high-impact and near-completion schemes, particularly in water, energy, transport and other core infrastructure sectors. Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2026
In 2018, Pakistan produced the widest survey in its history on how much nutrition its people were getting. The NNS or National Nutrition Survey was the fifth such epic exercise to be undertaken since 1965, and the first ever to show us the numbers from the districts. It was the most comprehensive data-gathering effort in Pakistan’s history and is regularly cited today in policymaking. The NNS results painted such an alarming picture at the time that the government should have declared a national emergency. Instead, I find myself writing this seven years on with a question as Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb tables an estimated Rs17.1 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2026-27: What did Pakistan’s budget-makers do with the population nutrition evidence? No prizes for guessing the answer was scant little. What we got instead is a story of policy documents without funding to see through on the ground, bodies meant to coordinate without the mandate or teeth, and a government that continues to treat nutrition as a humanitarian footnote rather than the country’s economic foundation it actually is. The FY2025–26 federal budget offered a clear indication of where nutrition stood among national priorities. Health spending was reduced by 16 per cent, while no dedicated nutrition allocation was included in the federal budget architecture. Child Nutrition Quiz Quiz: Is this child malnourished, stunted or wasted? Look at the photo carefully, then choose your answer below. Malnourished Stunted Wasted Healthy How others answered Wasted0% Malnourished0% Stunted0% Healthy0% Be the first to answer Image: UNICEF Pakistan This poll accompanies Prism's reporting on childhood malnutrition in Pakistan. Stunting, wasting and malnutrition are clinical conditions defined by measurement — height-for-age, weight-for-height and weight-for-age respectively — and cannot be reliably diagnosed from a single photograph. This exercise is intended to illustrate how easily these conditions are misread by sight alone, not to diagnose any individual child. What the survey told us The 2018 National Nutrition Survey was an extremely big deal in health and policy circles. It was done by the Ministry of National Health Services that teamed up with the Aga Khan University and Unicef to survey over 115,600 households and, for the first time, drill down into district-level breakdowns, adolescents, and water quality. The data it produced was both authoritative and devastating. Four out of every 10 children under five years in Pakistan were stunted or too short for their age. This means that about 12 million children were suffering from chronic malnutrition. Wasting was 17.7pc, the highest recorded in Pakistan’s history and well above the WHO’s 15pc emergency threshold. More than half of children aged six to 59 months were anaemic. Among women of reproductive age, 42.6pc were anaemic and 46.9pc of pregnant women were iron-deficient. A staggering 81.2pc of pregnant women were vitamin D deficient. Meanwhile, the country was simultaneously confronting the other end of the malnutrition spectrum: overweight prevalence had nearly doubled in seven years, and 13.9pc of women of reproductive age were obese. The NNS 2018 was also the first survey to reveal the burden of stunting and wasting happening at the same time in children: 5.9pc of under-fives are affected, and they live mostly in Pakistan’s south. Boys are worse off than girls, and children in cities were more wasted and stunted than commonly assumed. Also, 58pc of Pakistan’s household water supplies were contaminated with coliform bacteria. Malnutrition and unsafe water are not separate crises. They are the same crisis. Infogram taken from the National Nutrition Survey 2018 Key Findings Report. This data was published, cited in international fora, incorporated into global nutrition dashboards, and referenced in at least four major national strategy documents. What it did not do was translate into a budget line. What we decided to spend on the 2025-26 budget Pakistan’s federal budget for the soon ending financial year, 2025-26, was Rs17,573,000,000,000 Nearly half, Rs8.2 trillion, goes to debt servicing Defence has been allocated Rs2.55 trillion, a steep 20pc increase The Benazir Income Support Programme receives Rs716 billion, a 20-21pc increase, covering 10 million families. These are not illegitimate expenditures at all, but they do tell us where our political priorities lie when fiscal space is compressed. Health has not been spared in the compression. The health budget for 2025-26 stands at Rs46.1 billion — a 16pc reduction from the previous year’s Rs54.87 billion allocation. No new health schemes appear in the Public Sector Development Programme for this fiscal year. Within this already-reduced health envelope, the share dedicated specifically to nutrition is not separately reported because, in Pakistan’s federal budget architecture, nutrition does not have its own line. It is submerged within health, within social protection, within agriculture, invisible, untracked, and unaccountable. The estimated budget requirement for nutrition from 2023 to 2030 is Rs1.79 trillion. For the current fiscal year alone, the requirement is Rs227.9 billion. Against this need, Pakistan allocates a fraction which is declining. It is hard to describe this as a funding gap and easier to call it a choice. The rule is that when a subject has no budget line, it will have no accountability because spending on it will not be tracked. If you can’t measure the impact of money being spent, then you cannot improve on your performance. What cannot be improved condemns the next generation before they even begin. The weight of inaction The NNS 2018 documented a country already in nutritional distress. Since then, the conditions have worsened in almost every dimension. The floods of 2022, which were among the most catastrophic in Pakistan’s history, disrupted nutrition services in 84 flood-hit districts at the exact moment when millions of women and children were most vulnerable. The World Bank now projects Pakistan’s poverty rate to remain persistently high, between 40pc and 42.4pc, with an additional 1.9 million people pushed below the poverty line. Over two-thirds of the population cannot afford a nutritionally adequate diet on a daily basis. The infogram, on complementary feeding practices in Pakistan, is taken from the National Nutrition Survey 2018 Key Findings Report. Climate change is not an abstract future threat but an active, present accelerant for Pakistan’s nutrition crisis. We contribute less than 1pc of global greenhouse gas emissions but consistently rank among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Floods, heatwaves, and agricultural disruption reduce food availability, drive up prices, and destroy the supply chains that deliver micronutrient-rich foods to rural and peri-urban communities. Every flood season that passes without a nutrition-crisis response protocol is a policy failure with measurable consequences — in wasted children, in anaemic mothers, and in preventable deaths. Infogram taken from the National Nutrition Survey 2018 Key Findings Report. Nutrition International’s Cost of Inaction Tool estimates that Pakistan loses at least $17 billion (about Rs4.7 to Rs4.8 trillion) per year as a direct consequence of undernutrition — through lost productivity, increased healthcare costs, reduced cognitive development, and premature mortality. The 2024 World Bank Nutrition Investment Framework calculates that every dollar invested in proven nutrition interventions generates approximately $23 in economic return. Meeting the 2030 global target on stunting reduction alone would avert 855,000 cases annually, prevent 48,000 deaths, and save 8.8 million IQ points and 1.4 million school years. The economic saving: $6.6 billion per year. From one intervention target. A graveyard of good intentions It would be unfair to say Pakistan has done no work on this front. In the years since the survey, we have come up with a substantive architecture of nutrition strategies, such as the Pakistan Multisectoral Nutrition Strategy (2018–2025), the Multisectoral National Nutrition Action Plan (2023–2030), the Pakistan Maternal Nutrition Strategy (2022–2027), and a separate Adolescent Nutrition Strategy. Three provinces have enacted mandatory food fortification legislation and Pakistan has committed to the Nutrition for Growth summits, aligned with the UN Food Systems National Pathway, and signed the Sustainable Development Goals. The multisectoral convergence PANI (Pakistan Nutrition Initiative) project has secured initial support from the Islamic Development Bank. These are real achievements and they must be acknowledged but they are achievements in aspiration, not in implementation. The Pakistan National Nutrition Coordination Council, which is the top coordinator for all this work, is essentially inactive. The Nutrition Advisory Group does not meet regularly and does not have a working reporting mechanism. Analysis from Sindh suggests that funding gaps for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions stand at approximately 75pc. No systematic financing gap analysis has been conducted at the federal level. We do not fully know, as a government, what we are not spending on whom, and with what consequence. This is the paradox of our nutrition governance. We look good on paper with an impressive policy architecture, but it sits on an empty treasury and dud institutions. What could be done now I am putting down the minimum Pakistan needs to do to actually execute its own strategies, honour its international commitments, and put to use the evidence its own National Nutrition Survey produced. We need to set up dedicated nutrition budget lines in the federal PSDP and the Annual Development Plan, with mandatory nutrition-tagging of relevant spending across health, education, WASH, agriculture, and social protection. Without visible expenditure, there is no accountability. We should reactivate the Pakistan National Nutrition Coordination Council and the Nutrition Advisory Group with a formal mandate, quarterly convening schedule, and public reporting requirements. Multisectoral coordination must move from aspiration to documented practice. We should urgently commission someone to do a financing gap analysis for federal-level nutrition financing, modelled on the Sindh exercise, so we can establish, for the first time, what Pakistan is actually spending on nutrition and what the true shortage is. We should get the Ministry of Finance involved in decision-making as a stakeholder. Finance officials should receive regular, evidence-based briefings on the economic return on nutrition investment, framed in the language of productivity, GDP, and human capital, not humanitarian obligation. We should aggressively mobilise climate-linked development financing for nutrition from the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Islamic Development Bank, and the Child Nutrition Fund. This will position Pakistan’s nutrition crisis explicitly within the climate justice framework it legitimately occupies. This is what the provincial governments should do The 18th Amendment to the Constitution made health and nutrition primarily the job of the provincial governments. The federal budget for 2025-26 acknowledges this explicitly, with over 60pc of provincial ADP allocations directed toward social sectors. But acknowledging the structural reality of devolution is not the same as executing against it. Provincial governments must move from passive recipients of national strategies to active architects of their own nutrition financing. Each province must develop a costed provincial nutrition action plan that is aligned with the national framework but rooted in local epidemiology, particularly the district-level data the NNS 2018 uniquely provides, and integrated into the Annual Development Plan with ring-fenced allocations. Provincial finance departments must introduce nutrition budget tagging in their own PLAS (Provincial Loan Accounting System) and ADP tracking systems, enabling real-time monitoring of nutrition-relevant expenditure across sectors. Provinces with enacted food fortification legislation (Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) must urgently close the implementation gap between legal mandate and actual market compliance, including funding for inspection, enforcement, and public awareness. Infogram taken from the National Nutrition Survey 2018 Key Findings Report. Sindh and Balochistan, which carry the heaviest burden of acute malnutrition and where the NNS 2018 recorded the highest wasting rates, should prioritise nutrition as a cross-cutting emergency response theme within their respective climate adaptation and disaster risk financing frameworks. Provincial health and planning departments must nominate dedicated nutrition focal persons with budget authority (not merely technical advisors) and convene quarterly multisectoral nutrition coordination meetings with documented minutes and action trackers. The verdict of the NNS 2018 Seven years after Pakistan’s most comprehensive nutrition survey delivered its verdict, the children it counted are no longer under five years of age. Many of the stunted children of 2018 are now in school or not, because impaired cognitive development in the first 1,000 days is not recovered by a later enrollment. The wasted infants of 2018 are now children whose immune systems remain compromised by early malnutrition. The anaemic adolescent girls of 2018 are now young women approaching their own reproductive years, carrying the nutritional deficits of one generation into the next. Pakistan cannot build the competitive, educated, productive workforce it aspires to be on a foundation of chronic malnutrition. It cannot achieve the 4.1pc GDP growth target in its own budget while losing $17 billion per year to preventable undernutrition. It cannot claim to be a serious development partner on the global stage while its apex nutrition coordination body remains inactive and its budget carries no nutrition line. The 2018 National Nutrition Survey gave Pakistan’s policymakers everything they needed: the evidence, the geography, the scale, and the moral urgency. The 2025-26 federal budget gives us the answer to what they did with it. The question now is not whether Pakistan can afford to invest in nutrition. The question is whether it can explain, to the 12 million stunted children counted in its own survey, why it chose not to. Header image from Reuters
The federal government recently announced a Rs22 per litre reduction in petrol and high-speed diesel prices. The decision lowered petrol prices from above Rs403 per litre to approximately Rs381.78 per litre and was presented as a measure to provide relief to consumers facing persistent economic pressures. Yet the public response was far from enthusiastic. Instead of celebrations, many citizens reacted with scepticism. Others questioned whether the reduction would make any meaningful difference in their lives. The reason is simple: while petrol may have become cheaper than it was a few weeks ago, life itself remains expensive. Petrol still costs nearly Rs382 per litre, plus the prices of food, electricity, gas, medicines, transportation, and housing remain elevated. Consequently, many households do not perceive the reduction as a visible improvement. Public sentiment is also shaped by recent memory. Before regional tensions involving Iran disrupted global energy markets, petrol prices in Pakistan were substantially lower. Earlier this year, consumers were paying nearly Rs250-270 per litre. The subsequent surge in international oil prices pushed domestic fuel prices above Rs400 per litre. Although recent reductions have lowered prices somewhat, consumers naturally compare current rates with pre-crisis levels rather than with the record highs of recent weeks. From people’s perspective, the latest reduction appears less like meaningful relief and more like a partial reversal of earlier price increases From their perspective, the latest reduction appears less like meaningful relief and more like a partial reversal of earlier increases. Citizens evaluate economic conditions through their lived experiences. They judge affordability when purchasing vegetables, paying school fees, visiting hospitals, or receiving monthly utility bills. If these expenses remain, improvements in selected indicators rarely generate optimism. When fuel prices increase, transport operators often raise fares almost immediately. Traders cite higher transportation expenses to justify price increases. Manufacturers pass additional costs on to consumers. Yet when fuel prices decline, prices rarely move downward at the same pace. Prices rise rapidly but fall slowly. Consequently, households experience the full burden of inflation while receiving only limited benefits when costs begin to moderate. The food sector provides a clear example. Fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and livestock products all rely on transportation networks that connect farms to markets. During periods of rising diesel prices, transportation costs contribute to higher retail prices. Yet when diesel becomes cheaper, consumers often see little immediate change in the prices displayed at local markets. Part of the explanation lies in the broader inflationary environment. Businesses face multiple cost pressures simultaneously, including labour expenses, electricity tariffs, financing costs, rents, and regulatory charges. Once prices are adjusted upward, they are rarely reduced unless competitive pressures force businesses to do so. As a result, inflation tends to leave a lasting imprint on household budgets. Transportation expenses represent only one component of monthly budgets. Electricity bills, gas charges, school fees, healthcare costs, internet services, and housing rents continue to exert pressure on household finances. Even if lower petrol prices save a commuter a few hundred rupees per month, those savings can easily be offset by rising expenditures elsewhere. Perhaps the most telling indicator of affordability challenges emerged during Eidul-Azha this year. Anecdotally, many people observed that some families who traditionally performed qurbani every year either opted for smaller shares in collective sacrifices or chose not to participate at all because of economic constraints. When households begin reassessing even deeply valued annual practices because of affordability concerns, it serves as a powerful reminder that economic challenges extend far beyond the price of petrol. There is also a psychological dimension to affordability. Years of inflation have changed consumer behaviour. Families have become more cautious about spending. Businesses have delayed investments. Consumers increasingly prioritise necessities while postponing major purchases. Such behaviour reflects not only current economic conditions but also uncertainty about the future. Pakistan’s dependence on imported petroleum products further complicates the situation. While recent declines in international crude oil prices have created room for domestic reductions, future volatility remains a constant possibility. The writer is affiliated with the School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu P.R. China, and the Department of Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship Development, MNS-University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan. Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 1st, 2026
LAHORE: Pakistan emerged as the largest buyer of US cotton for the second consecutive week despite a sharp decline in domestic cotton and phutti prices during the Eidul Azha holidays, prompting industry bodies to urge the federal and provincial governments to reduce taxes, energy tariffs and interest rates in the upcoming budgets to support the struggling cotton and textile sectors. Cotton prices recorded a significant fall during the holiday period. In Sindh, cotton prices dropped by Rs2,000 per maund to Rs21,000 per maund, while in Punjab they declined by Rs1,000 per maund to Rs22,000 per maund. Phutti prices also plunged by Rs1,500 per maund to Rs10,500 per 40 kilograms, with market experts fearing further declines in the coming days. Chairman of the Cotton Ginners Forum, Ihsanul Haq, said Punjab’s imposition of a new tax on the transportation of cotton and phutti from Sindh has widened the price gap between the two provinces, making cotton more expensive in Punjab than in Sindh. The decline in local prices comes amid a sharp downturn in international cotton markets, where prices have reportedly fallen by as much as 10 cents per pound over the past few days, putting additional pressure on Pakistan’s cotton market. Despite the slump in prices, Pakistan’s textile industry continues to rely heavily on imported cotton due to dwindling domestic stocks. Pakistan remained the largest purchaser of US cotton during the latest reporting week, buying 68,030 bales out of the total 112,000 bales sold by the United States. Pakistani textile mills are also importing substantial quantities of cotton from Brazil. Meanwhile, India has taken what industry observers describe as a strategic and business-friendly step by abolishing all taxes and duties on imported cotton from June 1 to October 31. The decision includes the removal of the cumulative 11 per cent import duty as well as the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess. The move is aimed at supporting India’s rapidly expanding textile exports to China. Since November 2025, India has been exporting at least 30,000 tonnes of cotton yarn to China every month, compared to just 600 tonnes per month a year earlier. Rising exports had created concerns about shortages of quality cotton and the impact of import duties on the competitiveness of Indian textile manufacturers. The government’s decision is expected to further strengthen India’s cotton and textile exports. Cotton analyst Sajid Mahmood described the move as a timely example of how governments can support the textile industry in line with global competitive requirements. He said that, at a time when India is receiving significant cotton yarn orders from China and other major markets, uninterrupted access to raw materials has become a decisive factor. The removal of import duties will enable Indian mills to procure cotton at lower costs, helping them fulfil export orders on time and market their products more competitively in international markets. Mr Mahmood said the Indian decision also offers an important lesson for Pakistan. He stressed that policymakers need to improve the responsiveness of policies affecting the textile and cotton value chain while ensuring the uninterrupted availability of raw materials. Such measures, he argued, would help Pakistan’s textile sector better adapt to changing global market trends and improve its international competitiveness. In contrast, Pakistan’s cotton and textile sectors continue to face mounting challenges, including high taxation, elevated electricity and gas tariffs, expensive financing costs, and the recently imposed super tax on large industries. As a result, around 500 cotton ginning factories and more than 150 textile mills across the country have either shut down completely or are operating at reduced capacity, Mr Haq regretted. Call for budget support Meanwhile, industry bodies, including the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) and the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA), have urged the federal and provincial governments to reduce taxes, energy tariffs and interest rates in the upcoming budgets, warning that the industry could face widespread bankruptcies if immediate relief is not provided. Exporters have also called on the federal government to restore the previous final tax regime by treating the tax deducted on export proceeds as the exporters’ final tax liability, arguing that such a measure would boost exports and reduce tax-related complications. Adjournment motion Separately, Punjab Assembly member Chaudhry Ijaz Shafi of Rahim Yar Khan has submitted an adjournment motion in the provincial assembly, urging the government to halt plans to establish a gymkhana club within the Central Cotton Research Institute (CCRI). He warned that the move could undermine the historic institution’s role in cotton research and development. Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026
The government announced a reduction of Rs22 per litre in the prices of petrol and high-speed diesel (HSD) each on Friday. Last week, the government cut the prices of petrol and diesel by Rs6-7 per litre each with immediate effect for the week ending May 29 owing to lower global prices. Following the last reduction, the price of HSD stood at Rs402.78 per litre and that of petrol at Rs403.78 per litre. Another reduction of Rs22 in the price of each commodity means that the new price of HSD has been set at around R380 per litre and of petrol at around Rs381 per litre. The latest reduction in the prices was announced in a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), which said PM Shehbaz had promised to pass on “the relief to the people as soon as some space was created for it”. “That promise has been fulfilled,” it added. “It has been decided to reduce the price of petrol by Rs22 per litre and also cut the price of diesel by Rs22 per litre.” More to follow
A representational image of a person filling petrol in a car. — Reuters/FileThe federal government has decided to cut the prices of petrol and diesel by Rs22 per litre each, read a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office on Friday. This is a...
The animals arrive before the city wakes. By three in the morning, a few weeks before Eidul Azha, the livestock markets on the periphery of Karachi are already dense with noise and colour, the restless lowing of cattle from Sindh’s interior, the sharper bleating of goats driven down from Balochistan, the occasional camel standing in imperious silence while traders haggle beneath fluorescent lights. The men who have brought these animals have been travelling for days. They have fed these animals, watered them, negotiated their passage across provincial checkpoints and absorbed the cost of fodder — the price of which has only increased in the past three years — and the ever-increasing cost of transportation, courtesy a sovereign that refuses to be fiscally responsible. They are supply-side participants in one of Pakistan’s largest annual markets. But no official body counts them with any precision. Every Eidul Azha, millions of Pakistanis participate in a decentralised economic event larger than half the federal development budget. In just three days, half a trillion rupees flow through the country’s economy and half a million tonnes of protein are distributed. From livestock traders and butchers to rural farmers, transporters and tannery workers, this is the story of the vast informal economy that sustains this nation and that the state barely measures UNDERSTANDING EID CASH FLOWS Pakistan slaughters approximately 7.4 million animals over the three days of Eidul Azha. Cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep, camels, in that order of economic weight. The best available national estimate for 2025, triangulated from the Pakistan Tanners Association’s (PTA) hide counts, municipal offal disposal data from seven cities, and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) monetary flow data, puts the total national spending on Eidul Azha sacrificial animals and ancillary activities at approximately Rs641 billion in the base case, with a defensible range of Rs539-752 billion, depending on price realisation and incidentals. Even at the lower bound, this is more than half a trillion rupees, moving through the economy in 72 hours. To put that in context: Pakistan’s annual federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) allocation — the government’s entire development spending budget — was Rs1.1 trillion in FY2025. Private spending on Eidul Azha is equivalent to roughly 60 percent of the state’s annual development budget, generated not through tax collection or donor funding or institutional planning, but through the decentralised decisions of millions of households observing a religious obligation. No ministry coordinates it. No central bank directs it. It simply happens, every year, with a precision of timing that formal planners can only envy. Eidul Azha moves half-a-million tonnes of protein to tables across the country, transfers hundreds of billions of rupees from cities to villages, sustains an entire industrial raw material supply chain, and provides the peak income event of the year for millions of workers who are never counted in employment surveys. It does all of this without a single government directive, subsidy or implementation report. Broad money (which refers to all cash and coins in circulation, as well as all local currency bank deposits) data, as reported by the State Bank of Pakistan, corroborates the scale independently. In the weeks before Eid 2025, ‘Currency in Circulation’ (CIC), the stock of physical cash held outside the banking system, rose by Rs619 billion from its pre-Eid baseline. Strip out the normal seasonal drift in cash demand, and the abnormal cash pulse attributable to Eid-related spending was approximately Rs369 billion. Apply the standard transaction-equivalent multiplier, accounting for the fact that each rupee of cash is used multiple times before it returns to the banking system, and a macro cash-cycle estimate for Eid spending lands at Rs609 billion. This is strikingly close to the Rs641 billion from the physical animal model, and the convergence of two independent methods built on entirely different data sources is the strongest possible signal that the estimate is in the right order of magnitude. The cash tells its own story, as animals are bought and sold primarily in cash. Thereby, a spike in ‘Currency in Circulation’ is as reliable a fingerprint of economic activity as anything in the formal data. Livestock markets, like the one pictured above, are one link in the chain that leads to Pakistan’s enormous Eidul Azha cash flows | White Star SOURCING THE NUMBERS The methodological challenge of estimating Eidul Azha spending is instructive because it illuminates a broader truth about Pakistan’s economy — the most important things happening in it are the hardest to measure. There is no national qurbani [animal sacrifice] census, and the last livestock census was done more than a decade ago. To understand the nature of such a cash-rich economy, we try to triangulate the size of spending through multiple sources of data. The first is the PTA, which counts hides and skins collected after Eid by the leather industry. Every sacrificed animal produces one hide or skin. The PTA’s 2025 figure, more than 7.4 million hides and skins, is therefore the closest available national headcount of sacrificed animals. Its weaknesses include hide spoilage, informal collection channels and cross-border leakage, suggesting that the true count is higher than what reaches the tanneries. But it provides a lower-bound anchor that is more reliable than any survey. The second is municipal offal data. Every major city’s solid waste management authority publishes post-Eid operational reports, detailing how many tonnes of animal waste, offal, entrails, hides and carcass remains are collected and disposed of. These figures are physically tied to slaughter activity, as one cannot manufacture false offal. Karachi’s Solid Waste Management Board collected and disposed of 76,000 tonnes of offal and animal waste over three days of Eid 2025. The Lahore Waste Management Company disposed of 54,888 tonnes across the city in the same period. Punjab province as a whole removed over 230,000 tonnes of animal waste in three days. The third is the SBP’s weekly monetary data, the ‘Currency in Circulation’ series that is embedded in the Broad Money (M2) dataset. The pre-Eid cash spike, once isolated from normal seasonal variation, is a macro-scale fingerprint of economic activity that no amount of underreporting or informal transacting can entirely obscure. Turkey’s central bank documented an identical phenomenon for its own Eidul Azha celebration, wherein the cash pulse is a universal feature of Islamic festival economies where livestock is purchased for cash. All three methods largely converge on Rs600-650 billion. The conclusion is not that any individual method is perfect, but that the underlying economic reality is large enough to show up clearly through three different lenses, each with its own blind spots. THE CHAIN Consider the supply chain of a single cow. It was likely bred and raised in rural Punjab or Sindh or Balochistan. The farmer who owns it fed it for months on fodder purchased from local traders, and may have taken a short-term loan, informally, from a commission agent or a moneylender, to finance the feed cost in the weeks (or even months) before Eid. The animal was then sold, either directly at a roadside mandi [marketplace] or through a chain of two to three intermediary traders, each extracting a margin. Transport was hired, a truck, or a three-wheeled vehicle for smaller animals, adding income to the logistics sector. In the city, the animal was held at a temporary mandi where stall fees were paid, and where fodder sellers and water vendors extracted their share. After purchase, a butcher was hired to perform the slaughter and cut the meat. This is, for thousands of professional butchers across urban Pakistan, the single-most economically productive week of their year. The hide went to a collector, who sold it to the tannery supply chain. Every link in that chain becomes a rural-to-urban or informal-to-formal income event. The directional flow of this money matters enormously. As Pakistan’s GDP growth model has long been driven by urban consumption and remittance-backed demand, agricultural incomes, which support roughly 40 percent of the population, are chronically undercounted and structurally under-stimulated by government policy. AN URBAN-TO-RURAL TRANSFER Eidul Azha is one of the few moments when a large, clean, unconditional income transfer from urban-to-rural Pakistan occurs at scale, driven entirely by private religious obligation rather than government subsidy or development programmes. An average cattle animal in 2025 sold for approximately Rs110,000 at mass-market rates — not the premium animals that appear in viral social media videos, but the median cow that the majority of urban households buy, often collectively, through a seven-shares arrangement. Of that price, the livestock farmer retains somewhere between 55 and 65 percent, after paying trader margins and transport — a rough estimate, given the opacity of the mandi system, but consistent with value-chain analyses of Pakistan’s livestock sector. On seven million animals averaging Rs60,000 to the farmer, that is Rs420 billion flowing into rural and peri-urban household incomes over a single week. The equivalent of a medium-sized development programme, except it happens every year without fail. Karachi alone is estimated to have spent Rs185 billion on Eidul Azha in 2025, approximately 29 percent of the national total, from a city that accounts for roughly 15 percent of the national population. The offal data is the anchor here, as the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB), Karachi’s municipal solid waste authority, collected 76,000 tonnes of offal and animal waste over three Eid days. Working back from species-weighted offal yield per animal, this implies approximately 2.2 million sacrificed animals within the city’s collection perimeter, estimated to be around 945,000 cattle, 1.1 million goats, 110,000 sheep, and roughly 6,600 camels. The cattle count is what makes Karachi distinctive. Its species mix — approximately 43 percent cattle, 50 percent goats, reflects a city in which the seven-shares cow arrangement has become the dominant mode of participation for middle-income households. Seven shares means seven households pooling their resources to sacrifice one cow. It is the mechanism through which Eidul Azha democratises participation, reducing the per-household entry price. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have formalised this arrangement, publishing per-share and per-animal prices annually and providing a mass-market price anchor that is often more representative of actual transaction prices than mandi headlines. PROTEIN TO THE PEOPLE Seven million animals yield meat. Specifically, they yield approximately 532,000 tonnes of edible meat, a figure derived from species-weighted meat-yield assumptions across the 2025 national headcount. At the conservative base-case spending of Rs641 billion, this implies an effective price of Rs1,203 per kilogramme of edible meat produced through the qurbani system. That cost-per-kilogramme figure tells a story that neither the religious nor the economic framing of Eidul Azha typically acknowledges. Half a million tonnes of meat are distributed in three days, largely through a system of voluntary redistribution mandated by Islamic practice, one-third retained by the household, one-third to relatives and neighbours, one-third to the poor. The state spends tens of billions annually on food subsidy and social protection programmes that distribute far less protein to far fewer people, with far greater administrative friction. The targeting of this meat distribution is imperfect, it follows social networks rather than poverty maps, and urban poor with weak social ties may receive less than rural communities with dense kinship networks. But the scale of redistribution is real, and it is achieved without a single government form, helpline or district officer. Eid-ul-Azha is Pakistan’s largest annual food redistribution event, and it is run entirely by private citizens acting on religious conviction. THE HEALTH OF THE ECONOMY There is a development economics argument waiting to be made here about the undervalued social infrastructure embedded in religious practice, the way that institutions such as zakat, qurbani and sadqa [voluntary charity] operate as informal insurance mechanisms for communities that formal social protection has not reached. Among the most elegant pieces of evidence in this analysis is what the State Bank’s weekly monetary data reveals about Pakistan’s cash economy. In the two weeks before Eidul Azha 2025 in early June, ‘Currency in Circulation’ rose from Rs10,296 billion to a peak of Rs10,915 billion, a gross run-up of Rs619 billion. After Eid, cash began returning to the banking system — by late June, Rs280 billion had returned. The return ratio, the fraction of withdrawn cash that returns to the banking system within four weeks, was approximately 45 percent in 2025. The remainder does not disappear, it circulates in the informal economy, paying for goods and services that never touch a bank account. This is the texture of Pakistan’s cash economy, a monetary stock moving through channels that formal financial infrastructure barely glimpses. Eidul Azha, for three days, lights it up. The 2024 cycle was even more pronounced, an abnormal cash pulse of Rs475 billion producing a macro spending estimate of Rs783 billion, the highest in the four-year series. The 2023 figure, by contrast, was subdued at Rs225 billion, consistent with an economically stressed Eid, in which animal volumes contracted and households downgraded their sacrifice choices. The cash cycle does not lie about the direction of economic confidence. Its variation across years tracks living standards in ways that headline GDP growth rates obscure. THE INVISIBLE ECONOMY Behind every tonne of offal in an SSWMB logistics report is a person. Somewhere in the Malir or Bin Qasim area, Mohammad Akram may have just completed his busiest three days of the year as a butcher. He earns, by conservative estimates, Rs1,500-2,500 per animal for the slaughter and cutting service and, on each of the three Eid days, he and his apprentices may process eight to 12 animals. In a normal month, he earns Rs25,000-35,000 as a neighbourhood halal meat cutter. In these three days, he earns more than he does in six weeks. He does not appear in any formal employment survey. His income is not taxed, not tracked and not counted in any quarterly economic indicator. In Rahim Yar Khan, Ghulam Abbas, a livestock trader, has been buying and selling cattle for three months in preparation for this week. He purchased animals from smallholder farmers in the canal colonies at Rs75,000-90,000 and sold them in Karachi and Lahore mandis at Rs110,000-130,000. His margin, after mandi fees, fodder en route, and the inevitable animals that lost condition during transport, was perhaps 15-20 percent per successful animal. He operates entirely in cash. He has no Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC)-registered business, no national tax number (NTN), and neither a bank account into which he routinely deposits income. He is, statistically, invisible, since all of the above is not counted in any quarterly economic indicator. And in a village in Muzaffargarh, a farmer who has been feeding a buffalo for six months, spending regularly on fodder, finally sells the animal, for potentially his largest single cash transaction of his year. It pays off the informal credit he was extended from his local commission agent to finance the feed. It puts money into his wife’s hands for household expenditure they have deferred since winter. It buys school supplies for September and repairs a roof that has leaked since the last monsoon. This one transaction moving from an urban Karachi household to a rural Muzaffargarh smallholder is what an economist would call a wealth transfer, and what a sociologist might call a solidarity mechanism, but it is just really a religious festival. The absence of a national qurbani census is not merely an accounting inconvenience. It reflects a structural incapacity in Pakistan’s statistical machinery to measure its own informal economy and, by extension, to understand where welfare actually comes from and how it flows. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ national accounts methodology relies on formal sector production, tax-registered enterprises and periodic household surveys. None of these instruments are designed to capture a Rs641 billion informal market event that is over in three days and leaves no paper trail beyond a municipal waste disposal report. This is consequential for policy. If the state does not know that rural livestock farmers receive an annual Rs400-plus billion income boost from Eidul Azha demand, it cannot model what happens to agricultural household incomes when urban purchasing power declines. If it does not know that 532,000 tonnes of protein are redistributed privately in three days, it cannot calibrate its own food security interventions against that baseline. If it does not know that Rs609 billion of cash circulates through informal channels over Eid week, it cannot design monetary policy or financial inclusion programmes that speak to where cash actually goes. Sacrificial animals at a cattle market on Peshawar’s Ring Road: Eidul Azha is one of the few moments when a large, clean, unconditional income transfer from urban-to-rural Pakistan occurs at scale | White Star COUNTING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS There are tractable improvements available. The PTA already produces an annual hide count. The state should formalise this into an official livestock sacrifice census with provincial disaggregation. Municipal waste management authorities already produce offal tonnage reports. A standardised template, mandated by the Ministry of National Food Security, could convert these operational records into a usable annual economic dataset. The State Bank already publishes weekly CIC data. A dedicated Eidul Azha monetary analysis, published annually, would give policymakers a macro cash-cycle baseline, against which to track informal sector health. None of these reforms require new institutions, new laws or new money, but only the administrative will to count what already exists. There is a version of this article that ends with a set of policy prescriptions, which call to formalise livestock markets, expand banking access for traders, rationalise hide collection and integrate qurbani data into national accounts. That version is not wrong, but it misses a more fundamental observation that Pakistan’s formal economy, the one that shows up in fiscal accounts, monetary reports, and GDP growth announcements, is smaller and weaker than the economy people actually live in. The state taxes perhaps 12 percent of the GDP. The formal banking sector serves perhaps a third of the adult population, not counting laughably restricted wallets masquerading as accounts. Formal employment, by most estimates, covers fewer than 15 percent of workers. Everything else, the livestock trader, the itinerant butcher, the hide collector, the mandi fodder seller, operates in a parallel economy that is not broken or failed. It is functional, adaptive and deeply connected to the social and religious institutions that give Pakistani life its rhythms. Eidul Azha spends Rs641 billion in 72 hours, moves half-a-million tonnes of protein to tables across the country, transfers hundreds of billions of rupees from cities to villages, sustains an entire industrial raw material supply chain, and provides the peak income event of the year for millions of workers who are never counted in employment surveys. It does all of this without a single government directive, subsidy or implementation report. It is, in the most literal sense, the people’s economy, running on faith, obligation and the irreplaceable social technology of a 14 century-old institution. The animal arrives before the city wakes. The trader has been on the road for days. The butcher sharpens his knife. The tannery lights up its furnaces. And somewhere in Muzaffargarh, a farmer holds cash in his hand for the first time in months and thinks about the roof. The state should learn to see all of this. It has been happening, at scale, for as long as there have been cities in this country — the numbers exist, someone just has to count them. The writer is a macroeconomist and professor of practice at IBA, Karachi. He can be reached at ammar.habib@gmail.com Published in Dawn, EOS, May 24th, 2026