Official Blog Of Press Information Department

Courtesy:- Syed Mohammad Ali For more than three decades, Pakistan has been home to one of the world’s largest refugee communities due to multiple waves of Afghans crossing over the porous international border to flee repeated bouts of escalating conflict within their war-ravaged country. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had unleashed the first wave of refugees into Pakistan and neighbouring Iran, but then more refugees came to escape years of civil war, and then the brutality of the Taliban regime. Since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afg hanistan, some 3.8 million have returned home, but around 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees chose to remain in Pakistan, with roughly another million living among our midst illegally.

Courtesy:-   TILA KHAN The economy of Pakistan has been through many phases over the last 67 years of its existence. While there have been long periods of recession, there were times when the country experienced economic booms. Presently, the economy has grown to a level where it can be rightly branded as one of the major economies of the world in terms of volume. However, it has swung from the extremes of nationalization to massive efforts of privatization. The nationalization programme was implemented for the first time as a policy programme by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in order to lay the foundations of socialist economic reforms to improve the growth of the national economy. The programme began in 1972 to promote economic democracy and liberalization through nationalisation of basic industries including life insurance companies, vegetable ghee units and commercial banks. Even flour mills, rice hu...

Courtesy:-  S Rahman Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has rightly opined that the state cannot survive if the constitutional order was not respected and the rule of law not enforced. These views of the prime minister that he expressed at National Defence University need to be evaluated in the historical perspective with specific reference to the history of democracy. The fact is that ever since the democracy took roots in different systems of governance, from the days of the Athens to date, the constitution has always been viewed globally (with few exceptions) as a noble covenant that forms the very foundation of a state.

The Prime minster visited Quetta on 30 January to assess the situation and confer with provincial leadership on ways and means for bringing about necessary improvements in this respect. The present government right from its inception is taking special interest in the development of Baluchistan Province. As such, the socio-politico-economic situation in the province has been given top priority in the developmental plans. Particularly, the law and order situation is the foremost concern of the government. It was in the larger interest of the province that the PML (N) despite numerical majority in the province facilitated the nationalist parties to from government in the province. This clearly shows the sincerity on the part of the party leadership in addressing the issue of Baluchistan. Baluchistan has been unjustly neglected in the past and therefore it is necessary that the people of the province are given their due rights to decide on their fate. Federal Government would howe...

Courtesy:-  Malik Muhammad Ashraf Beginning from 1958 till today almost all the governments in Pakistan have sought IMF loans under various arrangements to bolster balance of payment position and to meet other financial needs. The irony about these loans has been that the oppositions of the sitting governments have invariably used them as a whipping horse to castigate them for their wrong policies that necessitated approaches to IMF but when they had the opportunity to rule they also followed the suit. Some economists have also been critical of the conditions attached to IMF loans and term them as self-serving for the institution rather than accruing the desired benefits to the recipient country.

Courtesy:-   Malik Muhammad Ashraf Traditional diplomacy has its own advantages and efficacy but it cannot match the power of public diplomacy, conducted through the media, in changing the perceptions and attitudes of the people and influencing their judgments We often hear our leaders hankering after projecting a soft image of Pakistan internationally and calling for a paradigm shift in the conduct of our foreign policy, with greater emphasis on public diplomacy as an effective and indispensable ingredient of the strategy to achieve the desired objectives. However, an incisive look is needed at what has been happening over the years in regards to realigning our foreign policy objectives with the new emerging global realities and the new mechanisms evolved as a consequence of the ability of the emerging technologies to expand the horizons and options available to conduct public diplomacy. Our record shows a rather regressive approach steeped in a visceral aversion to well thou...

Courtesy:-  Malik Muhammad Ashraf According to press reports, a former Ins­p­ector General Police of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Malik Naveed who is under custody of NAB and being investigated for filching Rs.1.8 billion in the purchase of weapons for the provincial police, has offered to return Rs.80 million as a plea bargain to secure his release. According to NAB sources the agency has recovered Rs253.712 billion in cases related to Bank default, rescheduling and restructuring of banks, court fines and amounts voluntarily surrendered by the accused, including US$1.5 billion from the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians under the plea bargain, since its inception. On the face of it the NAB seems to have done a wonderful job in retrieving the national wealth purloined by the unscrupulous bureaucrats and politicians.