This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "The lucky economy" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Syed Bakhtiyar Kazmi, who is very well-versed in economics and finance, has, however, advanced a somewhat strange argument by saying, among other things, that "And as far as government spending is concerned, we never ever focused on earning what we spent, by way of balancing the budget, we simply borrowed money, or more like printed money. And since we can print more money, why not pay all our rupee debts by printing even more money and stop worrying?..."

This sounds bizarre because of a variety of reasons. Firstly, printing money in excess can lead to fuelling inflation to alarming levels. Secondly, you cannot address the external sector obligations by printing any amount of money in PKR. Here you need dollars and you can never print dollar. Period.