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علی حسنین Ali Hasanain Profile picture
علی حسنین Ali Hasanain
@AliHasanain
I think about 🇵🇰's economy. Econ @LifeAtLUMS @eagpakistan @HaqMahbub Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow @egaptweets. Views expressed = own
May 26 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
They should put something like this on the back cover of every Pak Studies textbook.

Key economic indicators for every government from Ayub to Shahbaz 👇🧵 Image Because circumstances differed, and each government inherited from the one before it and left things differently for the one after it, I don't want to get into a comparison of governments.

This is more so a story about how little things changed across governments. Image
Nov 8, 2022 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
Zubair and I are discussing whether Pakistan should be pursuing a Mobile Phone assembly policy.

A few thoughts 🧵 My first issue with the Auto/Mobile policies is that they are not based on rigorous study of what 🇵🇰 should produce.

Why mobiles? Why not toasters? Or toys?

My conversations with policymakers suggest product selection is basically done on what the kids call 'vibes' these days.
Oct 21, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Pakistan has a tax problem.

One of the most important ways tax is broken is in the absurd way we allocates the country's financing burden across different sectors.

What could better taxation in 🇵🇰 potentially look like?
🧵 Agriculture basically pays no tax, but consider this:

For every Rupee earned in the Services sector, the state collects less than 5 paisas in tax.

For every PKR earned in Industry, the state takes 32 paisas.
Oct 21, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
While there is much evidence that Pakistan has been left behind by 🇮🇳,🇧🇩 on various outcomes, the way we flat-line since the turn of the century is new to me.

Looking at the 2020 🇵🇰 report confirms how bad we have gotten... 🇵🇰= 🟣, South Asia = 🔷️, all lower middle income countries = 🟧 here

We are doing worse than 🇧🇩🇮🇳 on sending kids to school, but those aren't the surprising numbers.

We are among the world's worst at test outcomes and learning at school.
Oct 7, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Montek Singh Ahluwalia was a key architect of India's 1991 reforms.

Serving as Commerce Secretary in Narasimha Rao's go, Ahluwalia was a Rhodes Scholar & had worked at the World Bank.

He started creating a key blueprint for the 1991 reforms, the M document, in the mid-80s. 🧵 the1991project.com/bios: "When Manmohan Singh devalued the rupee the 2nd time & wanted to follow up with - trade reforms, it took only 8 hrs from the preliminary briefing - thru preparation of the draft reforms & getting final approvals by Rao & Singh—to finalize & announce them"
Oct 6, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Interesting paper alert

@EconomistAadil
@gonwei
@saihan_io
@ajpirzada

Initial reactions If I understand correctly from a first skim, a country's complexity index is being defined here as how close its export basket is to an average of the US, Germany and Japan.
Oct 5, 2022 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
In our discussion of Meekal Ahmed's account of 🇵🇰's econ history, I described Bhutto yesterday as someone who tried to put a fractured economy (and nation) back together post '71.

Staying afloat through nationalisation & loans took priority over growth.

On to General Zia: "Zia’s regime represented the second episode of aid-fuelled growth after Pakistan became a ‘front-line’ state with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979."
Oct 5, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
A senior policymaker I respect says I was unfair to Dar here👇& ignored important indicators between 2013-17.

Instead of commentary, here are some raw statistics from the time (Dar years = red). I invite PMLN friends to argue against my conclusion that Daronomics is ☠️: GDP growth per capita:
Oct 4, 2022 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
Yesterday, I started telling you about the late Meekal Ahmed's overview of 🇵🇰's econ history, beginning with Ayub Khan.

In short, West 🇵🇰 grew through the competent use of massive aid. East 🇵🇰 was neglected badly in econ & edu terms.

On to Bhutto...

’Bhutto had little patience with economic matters.’
Oct 3, 2022 • 26 tweets • 6 min read
I often talk about the late Meekal Ahmed's Ch. in @LodhiMaleeha's book 👇, which I consider a must-read summary of the history of Pakistan's econ policies from Ayub to Zardari.

It's a history of decay & repeated mistakes, but also of struggle & fitful progress.

A 🧵 of 🧵s: Image Our 1st protagonist is Ayub Khan, who Ahmed clearly regarded favorably. Ayub's era had strong growth & low inflation, and strong econ mgmt with a @PlanComPakistan staffed with world-class economists, whose advice Ayub often deferred to over that of DMG types.

I like him already! Image
Oct 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
Some leads to fix this @Shehzad89

Ghazala Mansuri
Ayesha G Pasha
Hadia Majid
@AsadSaher
@Ayesha_Ali1
@_farahsaid
@_sarahkhan
@MadihaAfzal
@JavaeriaQureshi
@KateVyborny
Zahra Mansoor
@uafzalch
@mahreenmahmud
@ShanAmanRana1
@hinanshaikh
Maha Rehman
@nazish_afraz
@hinanshaikh @durre_nayab_
Shahida Wizarat

@shazia_ghani is one of the best kept secrets on Pakistani economics, 🤫 but unlikely to say yes to an interview given her job. You should try though!

And @AribaShahid for a business journalist par excellence.
Sep 27, 2022 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
Between 1990 & 2021, the average Indian's income quadrupled; the average Pakistani's? Didn't double.

Competing with 🇮🇳 is a national pastime, yet we've spent little energy in understanding what they started doing right in 1991.

Starting a 🧵, to which I hope to add occasionally Pre-1990 🇮🇳 often produced half the income per capita of 🇵🇰

This wasn't because we were covering ourselves with glory managing ourselves, but because of how dysfunctional their planned economy had become.

Look how far behind they were countries with similar incomes today.
Aug 12, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I wonder how the supporters of technocratic governance in 🇵🇰 will react to this news?

A quick 🧵 I tunnelled down the interwebs to look at the Chairmen WAPDA has had in the past. In the last two decades, there are more generalists (random bureaucrats or retired generals) than specialists.

With some exceptions, nearly all have faced corruption allegations, including ⭐️⭐️⭐️s
Jun 23, 2022 • 49 tweets • 14 min read
Yesterday's @eagpakistan lecture on reversing 🇵🇰's economic decline, in a 🧵

First up, a disclaimer: there is a LOT of important stuff I don't cover at all or sufficiently, such as stability, international trade, taxes, sector-specific detail, social protection and so on... Yet we seldom talk about the structural impediments to growth.

First, what is our problem? If you look at life expectancy at birth, Pakistan has gone from being 2nd best in South Asia in 1960 to 2nd worst.
Jun 22, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I was building my slide deck again in Urdu for this. @overleaf's editor doesn't play well with Noto Nastaliq.... Image Anything you type, the bottom half gets hacked off. Image
Dec 15, 2021 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
In 1991, Nawaz Sharif asked Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore and a famously erudite world leader to visit and study Pakistan's problems.

LKY writes in 'From Third World to First' that: “It was soon obvious that they faced dire and intractable problems. They had a low tax base, with income tax yielding only 2 percent of their GDP.

Many transactions in land sales were not documented and tax evasion was widespread.
Sep 6, 2021 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
I’m late to the party, but there has been a debate raging on Pakistani Twitter about whether corruption is good or bad for growth. Long🧵ahead: @reema_omer characterized @yuenyuenang's work as suggesting that ‘access money fueled growth’ in China.

I don’t know Omer, but the vitriol she has been subjected to is not deserved by what appears to be a good-faith effort on her part to engage with Professor Ang’s work.
Dec 28, 2019 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I am not @umarsaif's biggest fan, but this 'investigation' raises only two serious concerns: 1) whether there was conflict of interest in SurveyAuto's early days; 2) how the company ensures data privacy. The rest, speculation about the company and its clients' aims is laughable. News flash: the WB collecting data on markets along the CPEC corridor has legitimate, development-related uses. (Full Disclosure: WB Pakistan partnered with LUMS on a project I headed these past 18 months, but that ends in 3 days, with no financial claims outstanding)