History has an uncanny tendency to repeat itself. How else would one explain the KSE-100s pre-election movement that this column wrote about on April 30?
These days the PML-N is busy wooing voters with bullet trains and motorways. And while the MQM does not have an aggressive election campaign, its devotees are quick to tout the bridges and flyovers they built in Karachi under the regime of General Musharraf.
There seems to be no respite to attacks on political gathering as the elections near. What was only confined to the left leaning or as they call themselves liberal parties, has now spread to the other side of the spectrum too.
Having entered 2013, while the conventional banks are seen grappling against the industry headwinds, the largest Islamic bank of the country, Meezan Bank Limited is making greater strides.
After some wild gyrations earlier in the year, sanity seems prevalent in the foreign currency market, lately. The gap between the kerb market and inter-bank has narrowed.
Pakistan sits at the most hazardous stages of the national water security - a stage identified by the Asian Development Bank as a harmony of some movement on the policy and legislation side but absolutely trifling level of public investment, regulation and enforcement.
There may be an identifiable pre-election pattern - observed over the past few election years - in the case of Karachi equity market. But the relatively less formal real estate market has a different story to tell.
In the last three elections, the real estate market used to witness a pre-poll slide in the number of transactions, if not in prices, as investors thought best to adopt a wait-and-see strategy.
