Economics Research Seminar Series 03-2020
Topic: Unfolding Balochistan's Economic Grievances:Past, Present and Future
Asim Bashir Khan Presenter: Asim Bashir Khan is PhD Scholar in Department of Economics and Finance,Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. He was Technical Expert and Advisor to Government of Balochistan on Ninth National Finance Commission. Recently he has been nominated by Government of Sindh (GOS) as Member of Working Group on Provincial Finance Commission. He was PFM and Fiscal Decentralization Expert on multi-pronged urban development project called Completive and Livable City of Karachi (CLICK). He has also developed a contingent valuation model for disaster risk assessment and presented the same in Track-II Dialogue on Disaster Management in South Asia. He is faculty member and trainer of data journalism and investigative reporting for national and international journalism institutions; Centre of Excellence in Journalism-IBA, Karachi Union of Journalists, Karachi Press Club, Pakistan Press Foundation, World Free Press Denmark, Deutsche Welle Germany, Sri Lanka Press Institute, College of Journalism Colombo.
Abstract: The idea of this seminar/talk is about Balochistan's economy and to present historical account, evidence based dispassionate analysis with the help of exclusive data including archival records, colonial accounts of Balochistan's economy. The scope of this seminar is to discuss academic and policy perspective covering issues of development economics, poverty and inequality, public policy and public finances. Presenter will shed light on what went wrong with the province, and what are the prospects. Further to this, the discussion will establish an empirical claim, how Balochistan's resources have been drained and how much it has contributed in early years of Pakistan. The significant contribution had been the gas fields of Balochistan for green revolution, the quantum of resource transfer from Balochistan to rest of the country from 1954-2018. The presentation will include public finances with an indepth analysis and balance sheet of historically very sad state of affairs about how much Balochistan contributed and how meager it was compensated, resulted in backlog of development as of today. Lack of infrastructure, opportunities of employment and various rounds of insurgencies aggravated the bad economic condition of the province. Due to complex politics of resource sharing under National Finance Commission Balochistan remained a persistent looser and now increasing inter-regional inequality and similar consequences of CPEC are being observed.
Date: 21st February 2020
Time: 11:30 AM
Venue: MCS 5, Aman CED Building, IBA, Karachi