SBP moot on 'Economic Policy' cancelled

The State Bank of Pakistan has cancelled its two-day international conference on 'Economic Policy after the Financial Crisis', which was scheduled to be held in Karachi during this week.
Sources told Business Recorder on Sunday that the host of the conference, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Shahid H Kardar, is seriously stuck up in Islamabad and is engaged, along with his economic team, for dialogue with International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the issue of proposed 'Reformed General Sales Tax' (RGST). They said that the SBP Governor personally expressed regret to the speakers on cancellation of the international moot.
"I will be in Islamabad for the next four days, reviewing a variety of well known matters, with the rest of economic team," Shahid said when contacted by Business Recorder.
"It would have been odd for a conference to be held without the host, and I have personally spoken to all the speakers, and explained that these were factors beyond my control," he added.
The international conference was scheduled to be hold at SBP Learning Resource Centre on December 21-22, 2010. However, on Sunday, suddenly some officials of SBP were informed by the organising committee that the moot had been cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances. Several economists of international repute were invited to address the conference, and the objective of the conference was to initiate a debate on policy challenges relating to fiscal and debt management, monetary policy, financial supervision, and financial inclusion.
From Pakistan Dr Ishrat Husain, Dr Shamshad Akhtar, Dr Hafiz Pasha, Sartaj Aziz, and Dr Iqbal Zaidi of Princeton University, were invited an were to present their papers at the conference.
Dr Rashid Amjad, of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad, was to deliver a lecture on 'Breaking out of Stabilisation to Sustained Economic Growth in Pakistan'. Dr Abid Burki, Professor at LUMS, was to share his views on 'Rethinking Economic Policy in Pakistan - an Agenda for Reforms', and Dr Atif Mian, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, was expected to share his research work on 'Macro Policy and Data - Lessons from the Great Recession'. Former officials of the International Monetary Fund, Dr Zubair Iqbal and Dr Iqbal Zaidi, were also invited as speakers.