“No boom”: a dangerous economic cycle
External pressures are mounting without the growth dividend that once mitigated past setbacks KARACHI: Pakistan’s economy has long followed a familiar boom-and-bust pattern. Each cycle begins with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilization phase that focuses on fiscal tightening, controlling inflation, and temporarily improving external balances. When stability returns, political leadership usually shifts to growth, relying on domestic demand, cheap credit and rising imports. This expansion inevitably swells the current account deficit (CAD), depletes reserves, and results in another recession. For decades, the pattern repeats itself with almost mechanical predictability. Today, however, Pakistan faces an even more troubling variant of
