Fiscal Deficits and Debt Dimensions of Pakistan

Pakistan continues to suffer from a syndrome of high fiscal deficits and severe incidence of debt. Its annual fiscal deficit has stayed constantly at over 6 percent of GDP especially since 1990 [Pakistan (1997-98)]. The prevalence of such a high fiscal deficit over the years in a row has propelled increased borrowing from both internal and external sources to cover the resource gap. With inadequate improvement in the repayment capacity of the country debt has continued to accumulate at a massive rate. Serving as the cause and effect of each other, the volumes of both the fiscal deficit and debt have soared continuously. The most devastating consequence of high fiscal deficit and soaring debt has been the continuous accrual of massive debt-servicing. In fact, both the debt and debt-servicing have reached unaffordable limits. How to alleviate this situation has become the foremost issue of the country. While complete elimination of all the debt and thereby debt-servicing may not be easy to accomplish in the short run, efforts are needed to systematically bring the fiscal deficit down to a minimum affordable limit. What may be the minimum financeable level of fiscal deficit and how it may be reduced to that level are the issues addressed in this paper.

February 2001 Crisis in Turkey: Causes and Consequences

Turkey has suffered from different economic crises since 1990. However, the February 2001 crisis has been unprecedented in intensity and repercussions. Although many factors, both internal and external, may have contributed to their occurrences, the former owing to their inducing corruption and waste in the economy, seem to have fomented them more than the latter. Although Turkey has been getting transformed into a market economy since 1980, government intervention is still pervasive in its economy. Government still controls Central Bank, owns commercial banks, and operates public enterprises. It has liberalised market, currency, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), but still operates sectors like energy, sugar and tobacco. Such a level of state intervention had adverse implications for corruption, waste, effective reforms, etc. in the country. Further, since the transformation of the economy could not be accompanied by concomitant structural, legal and institutional reforms in 1990s, resources have constantly been misused over the years. Further still, groups owning bank, media and holding companies jointly have notoriously precipitated domestic financial crisis by stashing away the home deposits in their offshore branches. Finally, supporting agriculture and industry with politically-motivated credit for voting purposes has constantly been aggravating the drain of resources and thereby financial crises of the country. This paper attempts a critical examination of how such factors may have contributed to the occurrence and accentuation of economic crises suffered by Turkey over the last decade.

Properties of the integrated spectrum of serendipitous 2XMM catalogue sources

Our analysis is aimed at characterizing the properties of the integrated spectrum of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) such as the ubiquity of the Fe K{\alpha} emission in AGNs and the dependence of the spectral parameters on the X-ray luminosity and redshift. We selected 2646 point sources from the 2XMM catalogue at high galactic latitude (|BII| > 25 degrees) and with the sum of EPIC-PN and EPIC-MOS 0.2-12 keV counts greater than 1000. Redshifts were obtained for 916 sources from the NED. The final sample consists of 507 AGN. Individual source spectra have been summed in the observed frame to compute the integrated spectra in different redshift and luminosity bins over the range 0<z<5. Detailed analysis of these spectra has been performed. We find that the narrow Fe K{\alpha} line at 6.4 keV is significantly detected up to z=1. The line equivalent width decreases with increasing X-ray luminosity in the 2-10 keV band (''IT effect''). The anti-correlation is characterized by the relation log(EWFe) = (1.66 +/- 0.09) + (-0.43 +/- 0.07) log(LX,44), where EWFe is the rest frame equivalent width of the neutral iron K{\alpha} line in eV and LX,44 is the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity in units of 10^{44} erg s^{-1}. The equivalent width is nearly independent of redshift up to z ~ 0.8 with an average value of 101+/-40 (rms dispersion) eV in the luminosity range 43.5<= logLX <= 44.5. Our analysis also confirmed the hardening of the spectral indices at low luminosities implying a dependence of obscuration on luminosity. We confirm that the neutral narrow Fe K{\alpha} line is an almost ubiquitous feature of AGNs. We find compelling evidence for the ''IT effect'' over a redshift interval larger than probed in any previous study. We detect no evolution of the average rest frame equivalent width of the Fe K{\alpha} line with redshift.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 Tables. A&A in pres

Corruption in Pakistani Courts in the Light of Local Cultural Context: The Case Study of the Pakistani Punjab

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Understanding Daughter’s Traditional Share in Patrimony Sisters and Wives in the Pakistani Punjab

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