What will remain after the debt is repaid?

Pakistan's debt debate is stuck on the wrong ratio. The discussion obsesses over debt-to-GDP, as if solvency were only about the size of the liability. It is not. Debt-carrying capacity depends on revenue, exports, reserves, productivity, maturity, currency composition, and critically, the assets that stand behind the liabilities.

That leads to a harder question: what does a country leave behind after it borrows?

Borrowing is not development merely because a development institution provides it. A loan can finance a railway, a dam, a transmission network, or a school system that raises future productive capacity. It can also finance a budget that is already unable to support itself. A third category finances institutional reform. Its asset is less visible, but the test should be equally demanding: did the institution become measurably better?

Govt forms committee to review civil awards system

International experience offers a revealing contrast.