Key View

• Flooding and mudslides in Pakistan since June will severely hamper the country's food security, crop harvests, infrastructure and economy in 2022.
• The deleterious impact of floods on domestic agricultural production will serve to further stress Pakistan’s food security, which was in a relatively perilous condition prior to the onset

Key View

• Pakistan’s healthcare budget is set to decrease which will place added pressure on an already underperforming healthcare system.
• Private healthcare will continue to play a dominant role in Pakistan as reduced funding will limit the ability of public healthcare services to provide quality services.
• The latest health insurance scheme

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions, we hold unchanged our forecast for Pakistan’s rice production in 2022/23 of 8.9mn tonnes – an all-time record high level of output and a third consecutive year of output growth.
• Our view on the risks to future yield growth in Pakistan’s rice sector is that they remain balanced: the continued introduction of higher

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions believe the by-election win by the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in Punjab will place greater pressure on the incumbent to conduct an early election, which must otherwise be held by October 2023.
• If early elections take place, political uncertainty may ease, but we flag the risk that disbursements under

Key View

• After the State Bank of Pakistan hiked its policy rate by 125bps to 15.00% at the July 7 meeting, we at Fitch Solutions expect a further 300bps worth of hikes, taking the policy rate to 18.00% by end-FY2022/23 (July-June).
• We expect the State Bank of Pakistan will look to rein in rising inflation, support the Pakistani rupee and

Key View

• We have revised our forecast for Pakistan to grow by a meagre 0.6% in FY2022/23 (July-June) from 3.8% previously, which would mark a sharp deceleration from the provisional growth outturn of 6.0% in FY22.
• We expect high inflation, tightening monetary condtions, and elevated commodity prices to pose headwinds to growth.
• Furthermore

Key View

• Uptake of mobile services, as well as favourable demographic factors such as a rising urban and youth population, will increase demand for e-commerce services in Pakistan.
• However, weakening growth and rising inflation will push back on consumer spending.
• As existing e-commerce players are now well-established, new entrants will be

Key View

• After the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) hiked its key policy rate by 150bps to 13.75% at the May 23 meeting, we at Fitch Solutions expect a further 75bps worth of hikes, taking the policy rate to 14.50% by end-FY2022/23 (July-June).
• We expect the SBP to tighten monetary policy further in order to rein in rising inflationary

Key View

• Pakistan imposed a 17% sales tax on the import of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients in January 2022 and this has caused a nationwide strike in the country’s pharmaceutical industry.
• The new tax increase is expected to lower profit margins for local drugmakers, while the weak economic outlook will further exacerbate financial

Key View

• NayaPay, Pakistan's first electronic money institution, plans to launch a chat-based digital payments and enterprise financial management super-app.
• Pakistan shows a noticeable degree of mobile financial services adoption and its underbanked and large tech-savvy youth population create a supportive environment on which to leverage