Pakistan’s top financial ministers discuss challenges and opportunities at EPoD-CERP event

Pakistan’s top financial ministers discuss challenges and opportunities at EPoD-CERP event

Top government officials from Pakistan’s financial sector came to the Harvard campus on October 21 to engage with professors from Harvard Kennedy School in a discussion of policies to improve economic growth in the wake of Pakistan’s recent debt crisis. Pakistan’s Minister for Finance, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, and the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, Dr. Reza Baqir, struck tones of optimism based on tough steps they have taken, including monetary tightening even before the $6 billion IMF bailout in June. They spoke with HKS Professor Carmen M. Reinhart, who is a former deputy director of the IMF, in a panel moderated by  Asim Ijaz Khwaja, EPoD faculty affiliate and director of CID. The event was the first annual Pakistan Development Forum, co-hosted by EPoD and the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP). Click above to watch the first part of the video. Click here for the second half of the program, including the audience Q&A.