Political Analysis and Global Affairs

  Pakistan’s new NADRA-linked vaccination certificate requirement has caused confusion among some Karachi travellers as authorities prepare for implementation from 25 September 2026. An attempt to digitise travel-health certificates produced queues and uncertainty before the new system even took effect. Updated: 16 September 2026 I can picture the scene at Karachi airport because I have stood in those departure halls many times. A passenger reaches the terminal with a valid visa and confirmed ticket. His bags are already wrapped. Then, somewhere before departure, another document enters the journey: a NADRA-linked vaccination certificate. For some travellers, that certificate will soon matter. For many others, the new requirement does not apply in the same way. Yet during the past few days, that distinction became surprisingly difficult to see. Pakistan's attempt to digitise vaccination records for international travel produced confusion almost as soon as passengers heard ab...

Bank Alfalah's digital awards present one side of the story. Public complaints on LinkedIn raise a harder question: does closing a complaint ticket mean the customer's problem has actually been resolved? At a Bank Alfalah digital service centre in Karachi, the contradiction could fit on one sheet of paper. An ATM stood illuminated behind the glass. A handwritten notice across it said: “ATM IS OUT OF SERVICE.” Outside, according to a LinkedIn post published on 14 September, a security guard was telling customers that the machine was unavailable. I would not conclude from the illuminated screen that the ATM was operational. A machine can have power while its cash dispenser has failed. A network problem or another technical fault can also put it out of service. The handwritten paper interested me more than the illuminated screen. Bank Alfalah announced on LinkedIn that it had secured the Best Bank for Digital Excellence award at the Pakistan Banking Awards 2026 for a fift...

Instant personal loans offer speed and convenience, but borrowers should understand the total cost, KIBOR-linked pricing, late-payment charges, auto-debit rules and eCIB implications before accepting. I opened Alfa on my phone and looked again at the loan facility. Getting money through an app had been remarkably simple. Years later, I found myself reading payoff calculations, late-payment terminology and closure instructions far more carefully than I had examined the screen that originally offered the loan. That bothered me. The borrowing had been instant. Understanding everything attached to it was not. Pakistan's banks have brought consumer lending onto the smartphone. Bank Alfalah's Instant Personal Loan is a good example. A qualifying customer can apply inside Alfa without going through the traditional branch-based loan process. As of September 2026, Bank Alfalah advertises amounts from Rs 50,000 to Rs 750,000, with repayment periods ranging from one to four years....

  Pakistan booked nearly Rs2.94 trillion for power procurement over 11 months. The figure raises a deeper question about capacity costs, circular debt and who ultimately carries the burden of Pakistan's electricity system. The Bill on the Table I have looked at electricity bills in Karachi and gone back to the meter reading because the amount due seemed disconnected from the electricity consumed. First come the units. Then comes the number that really matters: the amount payable. Millions of Pakistani consumers perform some version of that calculation. They see expensive electricity and hear about capacity payments. Then they read about independent power producers, or IPPs, receiving enormous sums. It becomes easy to reach a conclusion: somebody is making a fortune while ordinary Pakistanis pay. A figure circulating online appears to confirm the suspicion. Pakistan reportedly spent almost Rs2.94 trillion on power procurement in only 11 months. The number is broadly correct. What pe...

  Pakistan received a record $41.6 billion in workers’ remittances in FY26, but turning diaspora savings into long-term investment requires stronger property rights, predictable taxation and institutional trust. A remittance message crossed my screen recently. The number looked impressive: Pakistan received about $3.7 billion from overseas workers in August 2026. I work with cross-border payments, so figures like these do not look abstract to me. Behind each transfer sits someone working in Riyadh, Birmingham or Dubai who has decided that part of his salary belongs back home. Pakistan has spent years improving the channels through which that money comes home. The harder question is whether we have become good enough at protecting it once the sender wants to do more than support his family. The $41.6 Billion Number Changes the Conversation Pakistan received $3.656 billion in workers' remittances in August 2026 , according to State Bank data reported on September 9. That was 16.5% hi...

  After 23 successful instalments, my final Bank Alfalah loan payment became a dispute when the Alfa app showed “EMI Already Paid,” but the bank later treated the instalment as overdue and imposed Rs 1,725 in charges. By early September, I thought my Bank Alfalah personal loan was almost finished. I had paid 23 of 24 instalments. For months, the repayment pattern had been familiar. Bank Alfalah would send an SMS before the due date telling me to keep enough money in my account for auto-debit. The instalment would then be collected. The final instalment did not follow that pattern. When I later tried to deal with it through the Alfa app, the screen displayed a simple message: “EMI Already Paid.” Then another Bank Alfalah system told me something very different. My loan was overdue. A late-payment charge followed. What began as a dispute over Rs 1,725 has left me with a larger question about digital banking in Pakistan: when a bank’s automated systems give a customer conflicting inf...