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Pakistan Keeps Looking to the IMF. The Bigger Debt Story Is Sitting Inside Its Own Banks

  Pakistan’s debt debate often focuses on the IMF, but the larger domestic story sits inside the banking system, where government borrowing competes with private-sector credit. I have spent enough years around banking to know that risk never looks the same from both sides of a desk. A businessman walks into a Pakistani bank asking for money to expand a factory. He may need new machinery. Perhaps cash is tight because customers pay slowly while electricity bills arrive on time. The bank studies his accounts and collateral, then asks the question that matters most: will this business generate enough money when the loan falls due? Another borrower enters the same financial system under very different conditions. The Government of Pakistan. It can issue Treasury bills and Pakistan Investment Bonds on a scale no private company can match. Banks understand these instruments. A market already exists for them, and the credit calculation looks very different from financing an exporter whose...
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China Is Losing America’s Garment Market. Pakistan Has the Cotton and the Factories. So Why Is Cambodia Beating It?

  Pakistan has cotton and a deep textile base, yet Cambodia exported more than twice as much apparel to the United States during January-July 2026. China's retreat from the U.S. apparel market should have opened space for Pakistan. Instead, Cambodia is expanding while Pakistan remains far behind. The comparison exposes an uncomfortable weakness inside Pakistan's export model. The Country Missing From the Graphic A graphic caught my attention on my phone in Karachi. It ranked the leading Asian suppliers of apparel to the United States during the first seven months of 2026. Vietnam stood far ahead at about $9.37 billion, while Bangladesh followed at $4.66 billion. China had slipped just behind it. I kept moving down the chart. Indonesia appeared. Cambodia came next at roughly $2.62 billion. India occupied sixth place, but the country I expected to see was absent. Pakistan. The omission looked strange because Pakistan has spent decades building an enormous textile industry. Cotton...
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Pakistan’s Corporate Banking Is Finally Moving From Documents to APIs. Askari Bank Got There First

 Working around banking systems in Karachi has taught me to pay attention to announcements that rarely excite anyone outside a bank. Askari Bank’s integration with SECP’s corporate registry marks Pakistan’s shift from document-heavy corporate onboarding toward direct, API-based verification of company information. A new banking app gets advertisements. A redesigned branch gets photographs. Nobody photographs an API connection, although it may remove more friction from corporate banking than either of them. That is why a development involving Askari Bank caught my attention this week. On 8 September 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and Askari Bank announced that they had completed an API integration between the bank and SECP’s corporate registry. Askari became the first commercial bank to integrate its system with the registry under this initiative. The connection allows the bank to obtain authenticated corporate information securely from SECP. � Associated P...
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Pakistan Wanted to Balance Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War Is Making That Harder

  Pakistan has long balanced its ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia. The widening Gulf conflict is testing how much strategic room Islamabad still has. A Warning From Islamabad On 8 September, I read a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry that would once have looked routine. Islamabad condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and declared "complete solidarity" with the kingdom. The wording mattered more this time. Pakistan now belongs to a three-country defence arrangement that treats an armed attack on Saudi Arabia as an attack on Pakistan and Türkiye as well. A day later, the diplomatic language acquired harder edges. Reuters reported that Pakistan had conveyed a Saudi message to Iran urging Tehran to use its influence to restrain the Houthis after attacks struck an airbase and oil infrastructure in southern Saudi Arabia. Seventy-three people had been wounded in the earlier wave of attacks. Iran's response, according to a senior Iranian official quoted by Reute...
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Iran Does Not Need to Close Hormuz. It Only Needs to Make Oil Expensive Enough

  Seven Ships Through Hormuz I looked at the shipping numbers from Karachi on Thursday morning and stopped at one figure: seven. Only seven vessels were recorded passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, 9 September. Four sailed out and three entered. Some ships may have crossed with their transponders switched off, so the number cannot tell us everything. Yet it tells us enough to ask a different question about Iran. For years, analysts have debated whether Tehran can close the Strait of Hormuz. The question usually produces maps, naval inventories and estimates of how quickly the United States could clear mines or destroy Iranian missile batteries. I think the events of September 2026 expose a weakness in that debate. Iran does not need to seal the waterway with an iron gate. It needs to make passage frightening and expensive. Brent crude was trading around $101 a barrel early on 10 September, nearly 30 percent above its early-August lows. Oil flows through Hormuz ...
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Who Actually Has the Power to Stop You Leaving Pakistan?

  Pakistan's Courts Are Testing the Legal Limits of FIA Airport Offloading I have travelled abroad often enough to know the tension that appears at a Pakistani airport just before immigration. The visa is in the passport. The airline has accepted the ticket, but another decision still lies ahead at the FIA counter, where officers routinely examine the purpose of travel and a passenger's arrangements. Financial capacity can become another issue. For years, many passengers have treated the interview as another airport formality. Pakistani courts are now repeatedly being asked to define how far that screening power extends. The question is moving beyond whether a traveller carried the right papers and toward something harder: what legal authority allows the state to stop a citizen from boarding? On 9 September 2026, the issue returned to the Lahore High Court. Justice Munawar Iqbal Duggal heard a petition filed by Naila Kiran challenging FIA's practice of offloading passen...
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UBL Has Overtaken HBL. But Pakistan May Be Measuring the Wrong Banking Champion

  UBL has overtaken HBL in deposits, but deposit size alone cannot tell us how effectively Pakistan’s banks channel money into lending and productive activity. The League Table That Made Me Stop A banking league table stopped me while I was scrolling through LinkedIn in Karachi. UBL occupied the first position with deposits of Rs 6.12 trillion, while HBL stood just behind it at about Rs 5.92 trillion. I have spent enough time around banking and cross-border payments to know that a balance-sheet number rarely tells its full story. The headline claim survives scrutiny. UBL reported deposits and other accounts of Rs 6.1186 trillion at 30 June 2026, up from Rs 5.1684 trillion at the end of December 2025. HBL's half-year report says its total deposits reached Rs 5.9 trillion, with domestic deposits alone rising to Rs 5.1 trillion.  On the numbers used in the LinkedIn graphic, UBL led HBL by roughly Rs 200 billion. That sounds huge when viewed from a household account, but the diffe...
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