Major Causes of What Ails Pakistan Today

1. The country's excessive dependence on external capital flows, which have generated extreme volatility of the economy;
2. The country's failure to raise resources from within its economy to fund investment and development projects;
3. The country's poor integration with the global economic systems; and
4. The gross neglect of human capital. Prolonged neglect of human capital has been a leading cause of Pakistan's failure to develop a vibrant, knowledge-based economy, despite the fact that the country is endowed with one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of only 18.2 years.

By Dr Shahid Javed Burki, an economist, a former finance minister and president of the Economic History Society,