SochBichar

#PIDEWebinar "Human Resource Management in Pakistan" May 5, 2020 #HRMPk #PIDEIdeas #Talentpk

#PIDEwebinar Discussion Room: Stock and debt markets stunted and insignificant Excessive and ill thought out regulation Excessive and ill thoughts out tax policy Market capture #FinPIDE #PIDEIdeas #PIDE #StockMarket #Debt #taxpolicy

Courtesy: Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) 

Through their personal stories, guests share how their work is helping build stronger democratic institutions in countries all over the world and how they are tackling some of the major governance challenges that many countries face today. The weekly discussion covers a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, governance, rule of law, and the role of the private sector in democratic processes.

Pakistan is the most frequent client of the IMF.  For this reason the subject remains under constant debate, as does the country’s inability to achieve either stabilization or sustained growth.

Adnan Mazrei who is now with the Peterson institute was with the IMF for 25 years and rose to the position of Deputy director in the Middle east and central Asia Department. Among his assignments he was the mission chief for Pakistan for about 4 years.  If I may add he was genuinely committed to making Pakistan achieve a successful stabilization.

I know Adnan to be very knowledgeable about the IMF and Pakistan.  For this reason, I persuaded him to tell us about

• The nature of IMF programs;
• Pakistan’s relationship with the IMF; and
• Macroeconomics and development

This episode is important to all Pakistanis who want to understand the IMF programs and Pakistan. I do hope the media people will listen to this before their fresh programs or writings on the subject.  They can be free to use this, but with the necessary attributions. 

Listen to this and let us reinvigorate research and debate into change. 

Listen to this fascinating discussion. There is much to learn and research here. 

You can also look at my book “Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger in 2050”now available in hard copy in Pakistan here http://www.libertybooks.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=Nadeem%20ul%20haque&category_id=0Soft copy here. https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Back-Pakistan-Became-Asian-ebook/dp/B06X94135J/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488133596&sr=1-1&keywords=nadeem+haque

Listen and learn and write some papers on this subject.  Don’t forget to cite Soch Bichar

Please subscribe to Soch Bichar if you like it. Tell you friends about it. That is the only way to grow a public discussion. And we need a wider conversation on these important subjects.

Riaz ul Haq, an ex Intel employee with experience of several startups, has also been an avid Pakistan watcher with a successful blog.

Today we pick his brain on the efforts to digitize the Pakistan economy and establish a startup culture. 

Listen to this very interesting conversation which recounts historical events in silicon valley and explains what policies for digitization and startups should look like.

 

Listen to this and let us reinvigorate research and debate into change. 

Listen to this fascinating discussion. There is much to learn and research here. 

You can also look at my book “Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger in 2050”now available in hard copy in Pakistan here http://www.libertybooks.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=Nadeem%20ul%20haque&category_id=0Soft copy here. https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Back-Pakistan-Became-Asian-ebook/dp/B06X94135J/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488133596&sr=1-1&keywords=nadeem+haque

Listen and learn and write some papers on this subject.  Don’t forget to cite Soch Bichar

Please subscribe to Soch Bichar if you like it. Tell you friends about it. That is the only way to grow a public discussion. And we need a wider conversation on these important subjects.

Often ignored, the Role of Government in an economy is a topic that every economics course should discuss in detail.

Because it is seldom discussed, economists and policymakers often pile on all manner of responsibility on an already overstretched government placing an increasing burden on failing governance. Many a public commentator pronounce the government to be the solution to all societal problems. No wonder the number of useless government departments multiply.

My guest today Javed Hasan has considerable clarity and substantial reading/research on this important issue. Javed is a finance professional educated at the London Business School with a wide experience of financial markets. Currently he heads the federal government initiative for skill training, NAVTTC.

The discussion fleshed out several important themes in this area and energized both Javed and me to take up this topic again in future episodes. 

This conversation raises several important question and issues. We recommend that all classrooms and offices use this podcast episode to clarify this important subject.  In particular the government training academies should definitely use this discussion to generate a debate on this topic for our future policy makers and administrators.  

At the request of President Ashraf Ghani I visited Kabul and met with him and some of this team that is seeking to build a new Afghanistan. 

While I was very impressed by what I saw, I persuaded President Ghani to do an interview to explain in his own words what his plans, policies and visions are.

President Ghani a former Professor at Johns Hopkins and a World Bank Professional as well as an author of a book entitled, Fixing Failed States has worked hard to develop Afghanistan.

Since much of his research work was on Pakistan, he knows the country and its people very well.

He has a broad vision of the region and is keen to develop Afghanistan and make it once again the “roundabout” of Asia.

Pushed by donors every Pakistani city is busy developing masterplans, an obsolete planning instrument. Masterplans freeze city development into outmoded concepts that planners left behind and makes the city planners and zones unable to respond to the demands of rapidly changing population movements and changing tastes.

Our city managers and planners of cities are continuously involved in masterplans because of availability of donor funding. They are not even working to debate the subject with informed citizens.

I am in Kabul at the invitation of the president to meet people and learn about Afghanistan. President Ghani has assembled a first rate thinking team and they are busy developing a deep reform of state and legal infrastructure. More on that later.

During this visit a met a very bright and thoughtful minister for urban development and land. His views on city planning and masterplanning are recorded here. They are worth listening to.

 

Don’t forget if you want me to continue doing this podcast, help me by subscribing, debating and spreading the word. I need the encouragement.

Pakistan is a story of missed opportunities thanks to excessive bureaucratic controls. We have talked of the sports industry as another opportunity missed in a previous episode.

• Unlike the past, we produce few sports champions.
• Despite a stadium or even 2 in many cities, there is no competitive sports or a sports industry.
• Yet we have many sports federations with considerable funding controlled by government favorites-- bureaucrats earlier players, bureaucrats or generals. All of these federations are bureaucracies stifling talent and the growth of a sports market. 

Yet the sports industry could be a huge employer.  Each small football team in the west employs about a 1500 people at a minimum and offers indirect employment—stadiums ticket sales, snack, and memorabilia sales—to 1000s of others. Just the growth of city teams in large cities would employ a over a million people.

Today we listen to a genuine champion on this issue--Olympian and former Pakistan hockey team captain Salman Akbar. With me is a Waqas Younas a well known writer and an entrepreneur talking to Salman to try to unravel this extremely important subject.  

I hope you enjoy listening to the combination of an olympian and economists. That is how markets can be made.   

Our researchers seldom look at this issue as a possible research topic and one worth of discussion as we remain obsessed with exports, industry and agriculture.  I urge you to think about this issue as well.

On a visit to the UMT I had a very interesting discussion on the vision and the people behind University of Management technology. 

The discussion also went into the idea of and the role of research, the role of the business school and the economy. 

Listen to this and let us reinvigorate research and debate into change. 

Listen to this fascinating discussion. There is much to learn and research here. 

You can also look at my book “Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger in 2050” now available in hard copy in Pakistan here http://www.libertybooks.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=Nadeem%20ul%20haque&category_id=0Soft copy here. https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Back-Pakistan-Became-Asian-ebook/dp/B06X94135J/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488133596&sr=1-1&keywords=nadeem+haque

Listen and learn and write some papers on this subject.  Don’t forget to cite Soch Bichar

Please subscribe to Soch Bichar if you like it. Tell you friends about it. That is the only way to grow a public discussion. And we need a wider conversation on these important subjects.

City planning professionals—Khurram Farid and Nadeem Khurshid and a profession of city development, Imran Mohammed talk to us today about the sad plight of our cities.

Listen to them tell us

• why our cities are so unlivable, how they are4 beholden to cars and captured by the rich.
• Why whimsical projects like the metro are so expensive as well as badly designed and executed.
• How cities, the most important invention known to man, have been messed up by the hubris of our princely political elite and colonial civil service who run cities without knowing their importance or potential.

Cities are the engines of growth. But in Pakistan their potential has been badly suppressed for decades.  Wake up listen to this and start reviewing and learning about cities. 

For the social scientists here, we need more research and thought on cities.  

 

I visited LRBT and was impressed by its work and the number of people it was treating absolutely free.

So please listen to Colonel Moeen, the graceful and stern manager of the Lahore facility talk passionately about LRBT, its history and current workings. 

I urge young researchers to write about such successes as well.

I was impressed by the work of LRBT, probably Pakistan's best philanthropy.

Today, I talk to Mr. Parvez Iftikhar an extremely able telecom professional who has served in many capacities to make the extremely efficient telecom that we are all very proud of.

I was very dismayed to learn that our apparent success in this area may not be sustainable because of several conceptual flaws.

This is an extremely important area which most laymen as well as development experts know little of.

I learnt a lot form Parvez. I hope you will pay attention and learn too. I also hope that some of you will also direct some research and thinking towards this sector so our policy can be more informed.

IMF program yet again!

Pakistan never seems to leave teh emergency ward. 

Ali Khizar talks to us about the impending crisis and what can be done.  

Will we ever do teh necessary to get Pakitan out of the emergency ward or are we an addict? 

 

 

The 5 million housing program is in. it is an important initiative and Economists should be analyzing it. 

Ali Khizar who heads up the Business Recorder research Unit has an analysis of the new policy. We discuss:

• Should the government build houses?
• Should government land be given?
• Should banks extend credit?
• Are there simple ‘win-win” private sector solutions?

Faizan Qayyum (@faizaanq) a young PhD student in Urbana-Champaign in Illinois is doing a thesis on local government and the civil service.

We talk to him to focus on

1. The necessity of local government for service delivery and effective development.
2. Can there be local government if DCs and Commissioners continue to run cities?
3. The importance of cities in economic development and why cities are an important unit on which local government should be based.
4. How local government requires autonomy at the lowest possible unit. Autonomy allows innovative competitive solutions to emerge.

Listen to this and let us reinvigorate research and debate into change. 

Listen to this fascinating discussion. There is much to learn and research here. 

You can also look at my book “Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger in 2050” now available in hard copy in Pakistan here http://www.libertybooks.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=Nadeem%20ul%20haque&category_id=0Soft copy here. https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Back-Pakistan-Became-Asian-ebook/dp/B06X94135J/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488133596&sr=1-1&keywords=nadeem+haque

Listen and learn and write some papers on this subject.  Don’t forget to cite Soch Bichar

Please subscribe to Soch Bichar if you like it. Tell you friends about it. That is the only way to grow a public discussion. And we need a wider conversation on these important subjects.

We have met Khalid Malik before. A well-known Pakistani development expert with long experience in China and the UNDP

Here we will learn about how to develop the state drawing upon his Chinese experience.

We are all cowed down with the term “Evidence Based Policy.” Proponents often talk about it with authority as if they have final evidence on that will tell us how the universe works. 

We really need to get deeper into what evidence is? How can we use it? how can we develop it? What does it mean?

We take these issues up with Professor Paul Cairney.

‘Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling, UK (@Cairneypaul).  His research interests are in comparative public policy. His research spans comparisons of policy theories (Understanding Public Policy, 2012), methods associated with key theories (Handbook of Complexity and Public Policy, 2015), international policy processes (Global Tobacco Control, 2012), and comparisons of UK and devolved policymaking.’

His website is here

https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/cv/Evidence Based Policy

As I keep saying in Pakistan we have worked very hard to maintain the colonial system for our brown elite that has inherited it. Not surprisingly the main beneficiaries of this colonial system are the ones mort invested in preserving it—the civil service, the judiciary and the army.

Civil Service Reform remains a big issue and we will continue to explore it with as many people as possible.  I would urge all young people to think about it, research it and write about it. 

Here we take up the issue with Hasaan Khawar a young Pakistani who has been a civil servant and is now a consultant and a development practitioner.  

We will have 3 conversations with him to try to keep the podcast shorter.

Here is the third. 

As I keep saying in Pakistan we have worked very hard to maintain the colonial system for our brown elite that has inherited it. Not surprisingly the main beneficiaries of this colonial system are the ones mort invested in preserving it—the civil service, the judiciary and the army.

Civil Service Reform remains a big issue and we will continue to explore it with as many people as possible.  I would urge all young people to think about it, research it and write about it. 

Here we take up the issue with Hasaan Khawar a young Pakistani who has been a civil servant and is now a consultant and a development practitioner.

We will have 3 conversations with him to try to keep the podcast shorter.

Here is Number 2