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.

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

Industrial Sector Input Demand Responsiveness and Policy Interventions

In Pakistan, government intervention in the input market of the industrial sector is considerable. It regulates prices of virtually all energy and certain other non-labour inputs. To stimulate industrial production and output growth, it also encourages the provision of extended credit facilities to the industrial producers. Further, it has also often announced adjustments/reductions in duties and tariffs on products used in industrial production. Conversely, government also imposes taxes on outputs. It may desire to levy new taxes on the industrial inputs. All interventions have profound implications for producers, consumers and the government alike. Therefore, it is important to know how they may affect the industrial input demand. Further, it is equally important to know how effective they may be for the government in the realisation of its objectives. The most pertinent approach to ascertain the industrial input demand responsiveness to government interventions is to obtain valid estimates of price elasticities. In fact, competent elasticity estimates of the producer input demand derived with a sound methodology can serve as a solid basis to predict producer responsiveness to market changes and thereby the effectiveness and desirability of government interventions. While the price elasticities of products over the years have been estimated for Pakistan, renewed interest on estimating responsiveness of producer input demand with modern estimation procedures has recently surged. Idrees (1997) and Khan (1998) have determined elasticities for the domestic large-scale manufacturing sector from a demand system. Although these research studies make a good addition to the literature, their scope is extremely limited because they have combined industrial inputs into large aggregates. At present, there is no study that has investigated the input demand elasticities of the domestic industrial sector at the dis-aggregated level.

Economic Growth and Its Determinants in Pakistan

Economically developed countries have been able to reduce their poverty level, strengthen their social and political institutions, improve their quality of life, preserve natural environments and achieve political stability [Barro (1996); Easterly (1999); Dollar and Kraay (2002a); Fajnzylber, Lederman, et al. (2002)]. After the World War II, most of the countries adopted aggressive economic policies to improve the growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP). The neoclassical growth models imply that during the evolution between steady states; technology, exogenous rate of savings, population growth and technical progress generate higher growth levels [Solow (1956)]. Endogenous growth model developed by Romer (1986) and Lucas (1988) argue that permanent increase in growth rate depends on the assumption of constant and increasing returns to capital.1 Similarly, Barro and Lee (1994) investigate the empirical association between human capital and economic growth. They seem to support endogenous growth model by Romer (1990) that highlight the role of human capital in economic activity. Fischer (1993) argues that long-term growth is negatively linked with inflation and positively correlated with better fiscal performance and factual foreign exchange markets. In the context of developing countries, investment both in capital and human capital, labour force, ability to adapt technological changes, open trade polices and low inflation are necessary for economic growth

Progressive collapse of reinforced concrete buildings considering flexure-axial-shear interaction in plastic hinges

Progressive collapse assessment of a reinforced concrete (RC) building designed only for gravity loads and lacking a dedicated lateral load resisting system was carried out using the alternate load path (ALP) method and finite element method (FEM) numerical model created in software SAP2000. Plastic hinge capacity of the members was evaluated considering flexure (M), axial force (N) and shear force (V) interaction and a validated procedure was devised to incorporate the plastic hinge capacity based on M-N-V interaction into the results obtained from the FEM model. It was found that consideration of M-N-V interaction resulted in plastic hinge capacities that were lower than the flexure-only capacity of the plastic hinges available in the FEM software which caused the progressive collapse to initiate at a lower load and also resulted in increased collapse area. In the second part of the study, it was demonstrated that the progressive collapse resistance of the building for the interior and the edge column removal scenarios was appreciably improved after ordinary moment frames were cost-effectively designed at selected locations without increasing member cross-sectional dimensions. However, key element design concept approach was needed for improving the progressive collapse performance for the corner column loss scenarios. Relative reduction in the plastic hinge capacity due to M-N-V interaction as compared to flexure-only hinge capacity was found to be lower for the redesigned building due to improved member capacity

Industrial Sector Input Demand Responsiveness and Policy Interventions

In Pakistan, government intervention in the input market of the industrial sector is considerable. It regulates prices of virtually all energy and certain other non-labour inputs. To stimulate industrial production and output growth, it also encourages the provision of extended credit facilities to the industrial producers. Further, it has also often announced adjustments/reductions in duties and tariffs on products used in industrial production. Conversely, government also imposes taxes on outputs. It may desire to levy new taxes on the industrial inputs. All interventions have profound implications for producers, consumers and the government alike. Therefore, it is important to know how they may affect the industrial input demand. Further, it is equally important to know how effective they may be for the government in the realisation of its objectives. The most pertinent approach to ascertain the industrial input demand responsiveness to government interventions is to obtain valid estimates of price elasticities. In fact, competent elasticity estimates of the producer input demand derived with a sound methodology can serve as a solid basis to predict producer responsiveness to market changes and thereby the effectiveness and desirability of government intervention

Does urbanization cause increasing energy demand in Pakistan? Empirical evidence from STIRPAT model

This paper reinvestigates the relationship between urbanization and energy consumption in case of Pakistan for the period of 1972Q1-2011Q4 by employing the STIRPAT (Stochastic Impact by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology) model. We have employed the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration in the presence of structural breaks stemming in the series to count for these missing elements in other studies. Finally, the VECM Granger causality approach has been applied to examine the causal relationship between the variables. Our results show that urbanization adds in energy consumption. Affluence (economic growth) increases energy demand. Technology has positive impact on energy consumption. An increase in transportation is positively linked with energy consumption. The causality analysis indicates the unidirectional causality running from urbanization to energy consumption

Analysis of Ketamine, a Rave Drug in Pakistan, using Gas Chromatography Coupled with Mass Spectrometer and Flame Ionization Detector: A Case Study

Ketamine is an arylcycloalkylamine, classified as cyclidine and chemically related to phencyclidine (PCP). Ketamine can be identified using modified Scott’s Test and Alkaline Gold Bromide test. This case study involved the analysis of a Ketamine sample. The sample was analyzed qualitatively by chemical spot tests, FT-IR and GC-MS without derivatization. Furthermore, a developed and validated method was used for the quantitative analysis of Ketamine using Gas Chromatography with a Flame Ionization Detector (FID). The certified reference standard of Ketamine in the range of 10- 100μg/mL was used for developing linear correlation with regression coefficient (R2 = 0.9997) for the method. The method produced percentage of sample as 90.27%. The above mentioned techniques and methods provide comparable qualitative and quantitative analytical results helping law enforcement agencies and the forensic community in screening and quantification of ketamine using GCMS coupled with FID

COVID-19 and liver injury: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and Aims: The prevalence and extent of liver damage in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients remain poorly understood, primarily due to small-sized epidemiological studies with varying definitions of “liver injury”. We conducted a meta-analysis to derive generalizable, well-powered estimates of liver injury prevalence in COVID-19 patients. We also aimed to assess whether liver injury prevalence is significantly greater than the baseline prevalence of chronic liver disease (CLD). Our secondary aim was to study whether the degree of liver injury was associated with the severity of COVID-19.Materials and Methods: Electronic databases (PubMed and Scopus) were systematically searched in June 2020 for studies reporting the prevalence of baseline CLD and current liver injury in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Liver injury was defined as an elevation in transaminases \u3e3 times above the upper limit of normal. For the secondary analysis, all studies reporting mean liver enzyme levels in severe versus non-severe COVID-19 patients were included. A random-effects model was used for meta-analysis. Proportions were subjected to arcsine transformation and pooled to derive pooled proportions and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Subgroup differences were tested for using the chi-square test and associated p-value. Means and their standard errors were pooled to derive weighted mean differences (WMDs) and corresponding 95% CIs.Results: Electronic search yielded a total of 521 articles. After removal of duplicates and reviewing the full-texts of potential studies, a total of 27 studies met the inclusion criteria. Among a cohort of 8,817 patients, the prevalence of current liver injury was 15.7% (9.5%-23.0%), and this was significantly higher than the proportion of patients with a history of CLD (4.9% [2.2%-8.6%]; p \u3c 0.001). A total of 2,900 patients in our population had severe COVID-19, and 7,184 patients had non-severe COVID-19. Serum ALT (WMD: 7.19 [4.90, 9.48]; p \u3c 0.001; I2 = 69%), AST (WMD: 9.02 [6.89, 11.15]; p \u3c 0.001; I2 = 73%) and bilirubin levels (WMD: 1.78 [0.86, 2.70]; p \u3c 0.001; I2 = 82%) were significantly higher in patients with severe COVID-19 when compared to patients with non-severe disease. Albumin levels were significantly lower in patients with severe COVID-19 (WMD: -4.16 [-5.97, -2.35]; p \u3c 0.001; I2 = 95%).Conclusions: Patients with COVID-19 have a higher than expected prevalence of liver injury, and the extent of the injury is associated with the severity of the disease. Further studies are required to assess whether hepatic damage is caused by the virus, medications, or both

Is Energy Consumption Sensitive to Foreign Capital Inflows and Currency Devaluation in Pakistan?

This study investigates the relationship between foreign capital inflows and energy consumption by incorporating economic growth, exports and currency devaluation in energy demand function for the case of Pakistan. The long-run and short-run effects are examined via ARDL bounds testing procedure. Foreign capital inflows and currency devaluation (economic growth and exports) decrease (increase) energy consumption in long-run. The results confirm a feedback effect between foreign capital inflows and energy consumption. These findings would be helpful to policy makers in designing comprehensive economic and energy policies for utilizing foreign capital inflows as a tool for optimal use of energy sources to enhance economic development in long run