The report titled 'Pakistan's Ignored Existential Crisis' by RAFTAAR is about the existential crisis that truly affects Pakistan; its inability to finance itself because it does not collect enough taxes.

The research identifies the looming and silent debt crisis plaguing the country as it relies on non-revenue sources to supplement the budget, such as commercial loans, concessionary donor loans and aid.

Lastly, it also looks into why people either do not pay their taxes or evade them; mistrust of state institutions and fear that money collected will be misused is commonly understood, however there is also a severe information deficit where the social contract between citizen and state and the role of taxation in that regard is not well understood.

The report is by RAFTAAR (Research and Advocacy for the Advancement of Allied Reforms) www.raftaar.pk a DFID (Department for International Development, UK) funded project. The knowledge base behind RAFTAAR includes a coalition with the CDRP (Consortium for Development Policy Research), which is itself a consortium of Pakistan’s top economists and economic think tanks (it includes the ICG, IDEAS and CERP). The research team was led by Dr. Hamid Mukhtar of the CDPR for the main report.