Thread by @rooshanaziz

With rise in fakenews/data manipulation its only human 2 make mistakes. @TheEconomist's Espresso publication mistakenly stated Pak's economy is contracting. A recession/contraction means negative growth in an economy’s output & is very different from a slowing *growth* rate & 1/9

However I reached out to The Economist & they were professional enough to admit their mistake & issue a correction. Funnily an ex-Fin.Minister & some journalists have been pushing the contraction/shrink narrative in nominal $ terms even tho PK’s real GDP is expected to grow. 2/9

You see being a leading agenda-setting newspaper globally, The Economist could have ignored me (a nobody) but still chose to reply & correct itself because truth must be upheld. Misrepresentation of facts is plain dishonest, especially if it misleads & scares the avg. reader 3/9

This is unlike the propagandists (TV anchors, editors & reporters) in Pak that have been repeatedly twisting the truth & comparing nominal USD GDP numbers based on currency movements & equating it with economic growth (or lack of) to fit their 'contraction/shrunk' narrative 4/9

Its high time journalists in Pak start specialising in subjects & start reporting based on economic research or (simpler) stop polluting the policy debate thru click-bait headlines, policy prescriptions or ‘pseudo-nomic’ interpretations! #EconomicsKoIzzatDou 5/9

Your news sets the pace for consumer sentiment that should be underpinned by integrity & professionalism. Reporters should be open to criticism & should immediately correct when found in the wrong. 6/9

Back to GDP. For this reason economists use the Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates to compare growth rates. This is specifically true for emerging economies where govt’s intervene to artificially prop up currencies w/o changes in the fundamentals (as in the case for Pak) 7/9

This is not to say that currency depreciations/devaluations do not impact economic output. It does feed through investment/consumption/savings decisions that are reflective in local currency (PKR) real (less inflation) growth rates - imports are captured in inflation figures 8/9

The aforementioned screenshots are from the IMF (PPP Versus the Market: Which Weight Matters?)
and The Economist (The Dragon takes wing) that give a detailed view for those interested in this topic.9/9 imf.org/external/pubs/… economist.com/finance-and-ec…