Aisha Ghaus

The economic cost of power outages in the industrial sector of Pakistan

Abstract This paper quantifies the economic cost of power outages in the industrial sector of Pakistan: first, by extending the methodology developed by Munasinghe and Gellerson [7,8] and Sanghvi [11] to allow for long-run adjustments by firms to outages like investment in generators and renegotiation of labour contracts with flexible timing provisions; and second, by incorporating multiplier effects on other sectors. Variation in anticipated and unanticipated outage costs per kWh by type of industry, firm size and location are highlighted by analysing data collected from a nationwide sample of 843 industrial units. A set of policies is derived for pricing and load management in the short run and investment in energy generation in the medium run.

Excess Burden of the Property Tax: the Open Jurisdiction Case

This article derives the general expression for the excess burden of the property tax in an open jurisdiction. The resulting expression corresponds to the loss of revenues resulting from the decline in structures and from contraction of city size. Also, it appears that if the land is municipally owned then there is no case for the imposition of the property tax. Simulations reveal that the marginal excess burden to revenue ratio rises exponentially and is sensitive to parameters like income level, nature of housing preferences, technology, and so on.

The Determinants of Rates of Octroi Tax in Pakistan

Octroi is a tax imposed by local governments in Pakistan on commodities imported into the municipal limits for local use, sale, or consumption. It is levied generally by urban local councils on goods coming in by all modes—sea, land, and air transport. The point of assessment is alongside roads at octroi posts situated at or before municipal boundaries, at railway stations, seaports or airports. Octroi is currently the largest source of revenue to urban local councils in the country and contributes 86 percent to total tax revenues and over 59 percent to total local revenue receipts (see Table 1). Its revenue significance (in terms of share in total receipts) has increased over the years. In 1987-88, it accounted for about 57 percent of total local receipts. Also, revenue generation from octroi is higher than that by any provincial tax. In 1991-92, total national collection from octroi was Rs 5.5 billion as compared to Rs 3.5 billion from stamp duties, the largest provincial tax source.

Is the Social Action Programme in Pakistan Financially Sustainable

Earlier neoclassical, classical, or structuralist theories [due to Rostow (1960)] considered economic growth to be a result of the right quantity and combination of saving, investment, and foreign aid, with surpluses from the primary, commodityproducing sectors being channelled into capital for further growth. Accordingly, the main constraint in these growth models has been the relatively low level of capital formation available. While the above paradigm has intuitive appeal, it, however, ignores the complementarity of social-political influences on the physical variables (i.e., capital, labour, etc.) in growth and development. Urquidi (1971) argued that the social progress of a nation is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth. It is now increasingly evident that the investment in the social sectors—primary education, basic health, housing, changes in land-tenure system, social security, better social relations–are as, if not more, important than the investment in the commodity-producing sectors or related infrastructure.