Financial Repression , Financial Development and Structure of Savings in Pakistan

The mobilization of domestic resources is one of the key determinants of sustained economic growth. Improving domestic resource mobilization involves raising the level of national savings to enable a higher level of investment, hence a faster rate of economic growth. Pakistan's saving performance and its overall economic performance appear to be incongruous. Over the past several years, Pakistan has maintained an economic growth of more than 6 percent which is laudable, but her performance with regard to savings has been poor. In fact, saving as a fraction of the Gross National Product (GNP) is one of the lowest among the developing countries. The current saving rate of about 14 percent of GNP fares badly with 23 percent for other low-income developing countries. 1 What are the reasons for such a poor performance of savings in Pakistan? This paper attempts to provide some explanations for the causes of low savings in Pakistan

Macroeconomic Policy and Private Investment in Pakistan

This paper demonstrates that a theoretically consistent investment function for a developing country like Pakistan can be specified and estimated. A variant of the flexible accelerator model was modified to Incorporate the special features of developing countries. Within the framework of the model thus derived, the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on private investment has been examined

Exports, Growth and Causality: An Application of Co-integration and Error-correction Modelling

The relationship between export expansion and economic growth has been examined extensively during the last two decades in the context of the suitability of the alternative development strategies. The decade of the 1970s witnessed an emerging consensus in favour of export promotion as development strategy. Such a consensus was based on the following facts. First, higher export earnings working through alleviating foreign exchange constraints may enhance the ability of a developing country to import more industrial raw materials and capital goods, which, in turn, may expand its productive capacity. Secondly, the competition in export markets abroad may lead to the exploitation of economies of scale, greater capacity utilisation, efficient resource allocation, and an acceleration of technical progress in production. Thirdly, given the theoretical arguments mentioned above, the observed strong correlation between exports and economic growth was interpreted as empirical evidence in favour of export promotion as a development strategy.

Consumption Patterns of Male and Female Headed Households in Pakistan: Evidence from PSLM 2007-08

Recent years have witnessed growing interest in analysing the welfare outcomes of female headed households (FHHs) in the developing world. The theoretical argument for examining female headship and family welfare is underpinned by two important considerations. The first concerns households’ access to resources, while the second pertains to control over the allocation of resources within the household [DeGraff and Bilsborrow (1993)]. A priori female headed households are expected to have access to a lower level of resources than the conventional male-headed households for a variety of reasons.1 However, this lower resource envelop experienced by female headed households may be partially offset by the way resources are allocated within such households. Several studies have revealed that resources under the control of women are more likely to be allocated for productive purposes that promote family welfare as compared to resource allocation under the control of men. In the context of Pakistan, the present paper aims to explore how resource allocation within female headed households differs from male headed households by examining the consumption patterns of both female and male headed households in the country

Financial Sector Reform and Its Impact on Investment and Economic Growth: An Econometric Approach

The financial sector is central to economic development as it serves the role of intermediary by mobilising savings and subsequently allocating credit for productive activities. However, in many developing countries including Pakistan, administered interest rate, domestic credit controls, high reserve requirements, use of captive banking system to finance large budgetary requirements of the government and controls on international capital inflows have remained the main features of the monetary policy. These repressive policies had their repercussions in the form of excess liquidity with the banking system, disintermediation of cash flows, segmentation of financial markets, underdeveloped money and capital markets, etc. [McKinnon (1973) and Shaw (1973)], therefore, argued that low interest rate ceilings unduly restrict the real flow of loanable funds, thus depressing the quantity of productive investment. Financial liberalisation, on the other hand, is defined as policy measures designed to deregulate certain operations of the financial system and transform its structure with a view to achieving a liberalised market oriented system with an appropriate regulatory framework. The financial sector reforms would lead to increase in loanable funds by attracting more household savings to bank deposits due to higher interest rates. This, in turn, would result in greater investment and faster economic growth.

Stylised Facts of Household Savings: Findings from the HIES 1993-94

Saving, the fraction of national income that is not spent on current consumption, has long been widely regarded as a key factor in economic growth.' The saving rate along with the incremental capital-output ratio determine the growth rate of the economy in the Harrod-Domar Model framework. The critical role of saving in capital accumulation and economic development is also recognised in the "two-gap" and classical growth models. For capital accumulation to result in sustained growth, it must be supported by adequate domestic/national savings. This has been clearly demonstrated by the extra-ordinary performance of the East Asian economies. While there have been brief periods of significant inflow of external financial resources to some developing countries in the past, foreign savings cannot be expected to provide a sustainable basis for financing domestic investment. Raising national saving rate is particularly essential to developing countries with a heavy debt service burden and limited capacity to obtain loans in foreign capital markets. The 1995 Mexican crisis showed, among other things, that low domestic savings can raise the probability of sudden capital outflows, and sharpen their negative consequences. In a financially integrated world, high national/domestic savings contribute to macro economic stability which is itself a powerful growth factor. Indeed, any macro economic adjustment programmes oriented to the resumption of long-run growth invariably emphasise the need to expand domestic savings.

Inflation in Pakistan Revisited

A notable development in recent years in Pakistan's economic scene has been the sharp pickup in the rate of inflation. In particular, Pakistan has experienced sustained inflation (changes in the CPI) hovering between 11.0 to 13.0 percent range during the last three years (1993-94 to 1995-96). The persistence of inflation at double-digit rates over the three successive years has attracted considerable attention of academics and policy-makers. Not surprisingly, one of the thorniest issues in Pakistan's policy arena today is how to put inflation under effective control. Recent studies on inflation in Pakistan broadly agree on the key factors influencing the rate of inflation, namely, the growth in money supply, the supply side bottlenecks, the adjustment in government-administered prices, the imported inflation (exchange rate adjustment), escalations in indirect taxes, and inflationary expectations. However, these studies do not concur on the relative importance of each of these factors as determinants of inflation. While Nasim (1995) and Hossain (1990) find money supply as the principal factors underlying the rising inflation rate in Pakistan, others suggest that food prices followed by government administered fuel/energy prices and indirect taxation are the primary impetus for the upward inflationary spira1.