Happy New Year!
2018 has joined the dustbin of history and another tumultuous year begins in Pakistani politics. Imran Khan government has completed 120 days in power and our January issue invokes multiples lens to examine what this new political set up has achieved so far.
Dr. Moeed Pirzada, prominent TV Anchor and Editor Strategic Affairs with GNN News analyses how PTI’s robust engagement on foreign policy and its multiple initiatives – facilitating US-Taliban Talks in UAE and opening of Kartarpur border – has not only increased their economic leverage but has put India on the back foot.
Hasaan Khawar, Fellow Consortium for Development Policy Research, evaluates PTI government’s 100 day challenges and argues that soon the government will have to show “real performance” on ground, because if its promised reforms took too long then the belief in the idea of “change” will start to fizzle out.
Saad bin Ahsen, a public policy expert, explains the importance of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in fast-tracking industrial development across Pakistan and how the Board of Investment (BOI), headed by Haroon Sharif (a frequent contributor to Global Village Space pages) needs to work on this.
Winter is hitting hard all across the country, and PM Khan must be lauded for launching shelter homes, Panah Gahs, for the homeless that always braved the merciless cold on the streets.
Our special feature this month, “Housing: a Pipedream No More?” thus looks at the PTI government’s housing policy for low-income groups, launched in October as the Naya Pakistan Housing Policy.
We conduct an overview of the issues and current situation of the housing market and we sit down with Zaigham Rizvi, chairperson of the government’s housing taskforce to understand how the government intends to achieve its objectives.
Namoos Zaheer, senior financial expert and project leader of the housing finance project at the World bank, describes what the bank is doing to support Pakistan in this initiative – in particular the current focus it has on improving the availability of housing finance.
Not forgetting the region around, we have Sanjay Kumar, Editor Hard News magazine, writing from New Delhi. He questions whether Modi’s hard nose realism will again deliver him the Indian vote bank in the general elections set for May 2019.
Trump had threatened Iran that it would impose the toughest sanctions that the country had ever seen. Alex Vatanka, the senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, questions the real impact of these “toughest sanctions” – given that Trump Administration was compelled to give waivers to 9 trading partners of Iran.
Enjoy reading and do give us your feedback.
Najma Minhas
Managing Editor