Pakistan’s financial landscape in November 2025 is a study in contradictions. The headlines splitting the nation’s economic narrative have rarely been this dramatic: on one end, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) continues to roar, brushing against historic highs and hovering around 160,000. On the other end, multinational corporations-some operating in Pakistan for decades-are downsizing, delisting, […]
From Forgotten to Frontier
For months, Pakistan’s economic headlines have swung between gloom and guarded hope. Inflation has inched up again, power tariffs have bitten into household budgets, the rupee has steadied but remains fragile, and the IMF has stayed in the foreground of every policy discussion. Then, for a change, something different arrived on 6 November 2025: global […]
The Inflation Hangover
The world is living through an inflation hangover that refuses to fade. Prices have eased from the post-pandemic highs, yet the disinflation story keeps stalling because global policy itself has become the new shock. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook projects global growth at about 3.2 per cent in 2025 and 3.1 per cent in […]
Undercurrents of Strain
Despite bright headlines and buoyant equity markets, the Pakistani economy is showing worry signals beneath the surface. On the one hand, the stock market index is pushing new highs, and the macro narrative paints a picture of stabilisation. On the other hand, core activity indicators-manufacturing, real incomes and employment-are sending mixed or outright weak signals. […]
Ports Without Power
When global shipping sneezes, trade-dependent economies catch a cold, pandemic aftershocks have given way to conflict-driven detours via the Cape of Good Hope, adding days to voyages, reconfiguring services, and pushing up operating costs. In such turbulence, ports that deliver predictability-fast vessel turns, clean documentation, reliable hinterland-win disproportionate volumes. Pakistan sits on premium sea lanes, […]
The Invisible Giant
Every time a street vendor counts his day’s cash after a long day, every unregistered tailor busy stitching in a city bazaar, every builder who quietly pockets part of a contract off the books-these are the threads of what can only be described as Pakistan’s invisible giant. It is an economy that evades measurement, dodges […]
Bulls, Bubbles & Pakistan’s Stock Exchange Gamble
Investors love a simple label. When prices rip higher, it’s either a “supercycle” or a “bubble.” Pakistan’s stock market doesn’t fit neatly into either box. The PSX’s surge has been extraordinary-new all-time highs, strong winning streaks, and an index perched near unprecedented levels-but the underlying economics, earnings math, and valuations point to a rerating off […]
Guns, Oil and Cash
Pakistan’s “Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement” with Saudi Arabia is more than a security story. It is a balance-of-payments story, a remittance story, a sovereign-risk story-and, potentially, a mining and energy story. If Islamabad plays it right, the pact can be monetised into predictable, programmatic inflows that de-risk the next few years of its IMF program. […]
Drowning in Debt, Drowning in Water
Pakistan has once again been hit by monsoon floods that have turned its breadbasket provinces into lakes, wiping out livelihoods and shaking an already fragile economy. The 2025 deluge across Punjab and Sindh is not just a humanitarian disaster-it is a macroeconomic shock that could shave almost a full percentage point off GDP growth in […]
The Fragile Axis
The appearance of unity among China, Russia and North Korea offers plenty of theater-military pageantry, synchronized messaging, and shared defiance of Western norms. Yet beneath the optics lies a far more fragile, asymmetrical economic reality, a relationship held together by necessity and strategic convenience rather than genuine coalition. Viewed through the prism of energy, trade, […]