Daily Times Editorials 25th August 2026

Credit Due

Moody’s decision to upgrade Pakistan’s sovereign credit rating from Caa1 to B3, while retaining a stable outlook, is a significant endorsement of the country’s economic recovery. After years in which Pakistan was routinely discussed through the language of default, dwindling reserves and external vulnerability, one of the world’s leading rating agencies is now acknowledging a markedly different trajectory underscoring greater stability, stronger repayment capacity and renewed confidence in the sovereign.

Pakistan has now returned to the Moody’s rating it lost during the 2022 liquidity crisis. S&P Global has already upgraded Pakistan to B with a stable outlook, while Fitch maintains a B- rating with a stable outlook. With all three major rating agencies placing Pakistan firmly back in the B range, the international assessment of the economy is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss. Pakistan has moved away from the edge and back towards credibility.

Foreign-exchange reserves rose to around $17 billion by the end of July, compared with approximately $14 billion a year earlier. Moody’s External Vulnerability Indicator has fallen sharply, from around 230 per cent to 145 per cent, while interest payments declined from 49 per cent of government revenue to about 35 per cent in FY26. These improvements reflect difficult fiscal choices, better external management and a sustained effort to rebuild buffers that had been dangerously depleted.Finding Low Interest Personal Loans

Pakistan’s successful return to international capital markets adds another layer of confidence. The Eurobond issued in April, followed by the debut Panda bond, demonstrated that international investors are once again willing to engage with the Pakistani story. A stronger credit rating can widen that investor base, improve access to global financing and gradually reduce the premium Pakistan pays on external borrowing.

There are encouraging signs at home as well. Economic growth has recovered to 3.7 per cent, inflation has fallen sharply from the extraordinary levels witnessed during the crisis years, and macroeconomic stability has begun to take root.

None of this happened automatically. It required fiscal discipline, adherence to reform commitments and difficult decisions taken at considerable political cost.

Challenges remain, particularly in exports, investment and revenue mobilisation, but they should not obscure the scale of the turnaround already achieved. Moody’s does not upgrade sovereign ratings as an act of goodwill. Its judgement is based on a country’s capacity to meet its obligations and withstand financial pressures.Tracking Live Financial Markets News

Pakistan has therefore earned this moment. The country that was being written off only a few years ago is rebuilding reserves, returning to global markets and regaining international financial credibility. The Moody’s upgrade is both recognition of that progress and a welcome signal that Pakistan’s economic recovery is no longer merely a domestic claim. The world is beginning to take notice. *

Safe Water

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources’ declaration that 29 bottled-water brands failed its latest survey should have triggered a visible enforcement chain long before it reached the news cycle. Of 230 brands sampled in 20 cities, 22 were found to carry bacterial contamination. Nine exceeded the applicable sodium limit of 50 parts per million, while four crossed the 500 ppm ceiling for total dissolved solids. High total dissolved solids do not, by themselves, identify the substance in the water or establish a particular illness.

Pakistan has allowed this to become a quarterly disclosure ritual. PCRWR tests, names brands and advises consumers to consult a report. Its corresponding April-June exercise last year found 23 unsafe brands among 203 samples. Families are being asked to navigate a market that ought to have been made safe before a bottle reaches a school canteen, bus terminal, hospital ward or kitchen table.

Bottled drinking water is a compulsory product standard, and the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority’s published procedures envisage at least two periodic inspections of each licensed unit, alongside random sampling from shops and warehouses. Its own non-conformance protocol says a unit should refrain from manufacturing, stocking and selling a product until a vigilance inspection establishes conformity.Installing Water Filters

Producers are entitled to documented counter-samples and a swift hearing. A failed sample cannot become a licence for arbitrary reputational punishment, particularly where a brand may have different plants or production runs. Yet that consideration demands faster, batch-specific enforcement; it cannot justify leaving suspect bottles in circulation while correspondence drags on.

Bottled water became an everyday necessity because public supply has not earned public confidence. UNICEF estimates that 70 per cent of Pakistani households still drink bacterially contaminated water, while poor water and sanitation are linked to an estimated 53,000 annual diarrhoea deaths among children under five.

The 201 brands classified as safe in the latest survey deserve mention, too, though with an essential qualification: they passed the samples tested in that quarter. The public should be able to see where and when the sample was taken, the batch code, the breached parameter, the retest result and the eventual sanction. *