AGL 37.91 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-0.29%)
AIRLINK 215.50 Increased By ▲ 18.14 (9.19%)
BOP 9.80 Increased By ▲ 0.26 (2.73%)
CNERGY 6.83 Increased By ▲ 0.92 (15.57%)
DCL 9.18 Increased By ▲ 0.36 (4.08%)
DFML 39.00 Increased By ▲ 3.26 (9.12%)
DGKC 100.80 Increased By ▲ 3.94 (4.07%)
FCCL 36.50 Increased By ▲ 1.25 (3.55%)
FFBL 88.94 Increased By ▲ 6.64 (8.07%)
FFL 14.49 Increased By ▲ 1.32 (10.02%)
HUBC 134.52 Increased By ▲ 6.97 (5.46%)
HUMNL 13.65 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (1.11%)
KEL 5.69 Increased By ▲ 0.37 (6.95%)
KOSM 7.39 Increased By ▲ 0.39 (5.57%)
MLCF 46.00 Increased By ▲ 1.30 (2.91%)
NBP 61.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.22 (-0.36%)
OGDC 233.25 Increased By ▲ 18.58 (8.66%)
PAEL 40.75 Increased By ▲ 1.96 (5.05%)
PIBTL 8.57 Increased By ▲ 0.32 (3.88%)
PPL 203.15 Increased By ▲ 10.07 (5.22%)
PRL 41.15 Increased By ▲ 2.49 (6.44%)
PTC 28.38 Increased By ▲ 2.58 (10%)
SEARL 108.40 Increased By ▲ 4.80 (4.63%)
TELE 8.75 Increased By ▲ 0.45 (5.42%)
TOMCL 36.00 Increased By ▲ 1.00 (2.86%)
TPLP 13.80 Increased By ▲ 0.50 (3.76%)
TREET 24.38 Increased By ▲ 2.22 (10.02%)
TRG 61.15 Increased By ▲ 5.56 (10%)
UNITY 34.47 Increased By ▲ 1.50 (4.55%)
WTL 1.74 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (8.75%)
BR100 12,244 Increased By 517.6 (4.41%)
BR30 38,419 Increased By 2042.6 (5.62%)
KSE100 113,924 Increased By 4411.3 (4.03%)
KSE30 36,044 Increased By 1530.5 (4.43%)

This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "The lucky economy" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Syed Bakhtiyar Kazmi, who is very well-versed in economics and finance, has, however, advanced a somewhat strange argument by saying, among other things, that "And as far as government spending is concerned, we never ever focused on earning what we spent, by way of balancing the budget, we simply borrowed money, or more like printed money. And since we can print more money, why not pay all our rupee debts by printing even more money and stop worrying?..."

This sounds bizarre because of a variety of reasons. Firstly, printing money in excess can lead to fuelling inflation to alarming levels. Secondly, you cannot address the external sector obligations by printing any amount of money in PKR. Here you need dollars and you can never print dollar. Period.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020

Comments

Comments are closed.