Financial Repression , Financial Development and Structure of Savings in Pakistan

The mobilization of domestic resources is one of the key determinants of sustained economic growth. Improving domestic resource mobilization involves raising the level of national savings to enable a higher level of investment, hence a faster rate of economic growth. Pakistan’s saving performance and its overall economic performance appear to be incongruous. Over the past several years, Pakistan has maintained an economic growth of more than 6 percent which is laudable, but her performance with regard to savings has been poor. In fact, saving as a fraction of the Gross National Product (GNP) is one of the lowest among the developing countries. The current saving rate of about 14 percent of GNP fares badly with 23 percent for other low-income developing countries. 1 What are the reasons for such a poor performance of savings in Pakistan? This paper attempts to provide some explanations for the causes of low savings in Pakistan.