State Bank of Pakistan Governor Tariq Bajwa was in Islamabad with the IMF mission, flanked by his technical team I led.
asserted
I → flank → team
By evening, Bajwa had resigned.
asserted
Bajwa → resign → evening
The finance secretary at the time told me a new governor would be appointed by nightfall: Reza Baqir, the IMF’s resident representative in Egypt, already in town and ready to assume charge.
asserted
governor → tell → charge
The notification followed the next day, a Saturday.
asserted
notification → follow → day
Within 24 hours, over a weekend, a serving IMF official had been installed at the helm of the central bank, as abruptly as Bajwa’s own 2017 appointment had followed a rupee devaluation.
asserted
appointment → serve → devaluation
Opacity is not the only problem; law compounds it.
asserted
law → compound → it
The 2022 amendments to the SBP Act, while granting welcome operational autonomy, also imposed restrictions found nowhere in the IMF’s own safeguards assessment: an outright bar on dual nationals, and a requirement that a candidate completes a full five-year term before turning 65.
asserted
candidate → grant → 65
Together, these eliminate precisely the cohort best placed to lead the central bank, favouring insiders over competence.
asserted
these → eliminate → competence
Contrast this with how Britain appoints the governor of the Bank of England: open international advertisement, a shortlist, ministerial interviews, and months of public notice before the transition begins.
asserted
transition → contrast → notice
That is the process that produced Andrew Bailey to succeed Mark Carney in March 2020.
asserted
that → produce → March
In Pakistan, favoured candidates are installed within a day, while everyone else waits months, even years, for a vacancy the law says must be filled within 30 days.
asserted
law → instal → days
Mark Carney’s trajectory sharpens the point further.
asserted
trajectory → sharpen → point
A Canadian citizen who also held Irish citizenship through family ancestry, he was appointed governor of the Bank of England in Nov 2012, and ran UK monetary policy and financial stability for nearly seven years, through the 2016 Brexit shock.
asserted
he → hold → shock
In 2018, while still governor, he acquired British citizenship too, holding three nationalities as custodian of Britain’s currency, with no credible case that he favoured Canadian or Irish interests over British ones.
asserted
he → acquire → ones
Stanley Fischer, author of three of the most influential economics textbooks, and former first deputy managing director of the IMF, served as vice chair of the US Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017, while holding two citizenships, from age 70 to 74.
asserted
Fischer → serve → 74
More recently, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand appointed Dr Anna Breman, a Swedish national, as its first female governor.
asserted
Bank → appoint → governor
Dr Breman’s appointment in Aug 2025 followed a rigorous recruitment process, that even involved a global executive search firm.
asserted
that → follow → firm
Baqir is the more contested recent case, but the criticism was never really about a passport; it was that an IMF insider negotiating a Pakistani programme sat ‘on both sides of the table’, a concern about institutional capture, not nationality.
asserted
insider → negotiate → capture
The governor’s post fell vacant in May 2022 and took over three months to fill, breaching the SBP Act’s 30-day requirement; a deputy governor’s post vacant since Nov 2024 was filled only in Aug 2026.
uncertain
post → fall → Aug
Leadership has increasingly gone to candidates with modest qualifications, and qualified economists are either sidelined or leaving the SBP, a brain drain that is entirely self-inflicted.
asserted
that → go → SBP
Brain drain is estimated to cost Pakistan roughly $4.2 billion annually.
asserted
drain → estimate → billion
Pakistan’s economy, sustained by remittances, external borrowing, real estate speculation, and import-led consumption rather than exports, demands sophisticated leadership, not a bureaucratic placeholder chosen for compliance.
asserted
economy → sustain → compliance
Article 63(1)(c) bars dual nationals from parliament since an elected official answers to voters as the sole political principal, and a second citizenship competes with that loyalty.
asserted
citizenship → bar → loyalty
A central bank governor is not elected, but appointed, and constrained by statute, audit, parliamentary review, and a monetary policy committee, an accountability built on expertise, not a mandate.
asserted
governor → elect → expertise
That is why dual nationality has long been lawful for the wider civil service, precisely because competence, not electoral legitimacy, is what those roles select for.
asserted
roles → select → what
A 2025 Senate report counted roughly 2,365 civil servants or their spouses holding dual nationality under that lawful regime.
asserted
report → count → regime
Extending the Article 63 logic to appointed posts applies a rule built for one office to a fundamentally different one.
asserted
Extending → extend → one
The government’s 2026 policy, read past the headline, already leans this way: the Civil Servants (Disclosure and Regulation of Foreign Nationality) Rules require employees to disclose foreign citizenship annually, treating concealment, not citizenship itself, as misconduct.
asserted
Rules → read → misconduct
A second passport is often acquired for reasons of economics and convenience, educating children, or freedom to travel, not disloyalty.
asserted
passport → acquire → children
The genuine concerns — divided loyalty, foreign leverage, capture by a foreign employer — are real, and better addressed by targeted tools than a passport count: disclosure of foreign assets, recusal where a conflict is shown, and cooling-off periods after work for a foreign government or an institution like the IMF.
asserted
conflict → address → IMF
The US Federal Reserve applies this to its officials.
asserted
Reserve → apply → officials
It also catches the single-passport holder who has taken money from a foreign government, someone a citizenship test would wave through.
asserted
test → catch → government
Pakistan need not start from scratch.
asserted
Pakistan → start → scratch
In 2022, the prime minister notified the ISI as the Special Vetting Agency for public office holders.
asserted
minister → notify → holders
The mechanism only needs streamlining to run on specific safeguards, not opaque “cleared” or “not cleared” verdicts that strip the federal government’s own statutory appointment authority.
asserted
that → need → authority
It is time to remove the dual-nationality bar and age restrictions on appointments to the governor, deputy governor, and Monetary Policy Committee positions.
asserted
It → remove → governor
The question worth asking of any candidate is not how many passports are in their drawer, but whether their record and enforceable safeguards assure they will act in the country’s interest.
asserted
they → ask → interest
A passport count answers none of that.
asserted
count → answer → that
Performance, integrity, and disclosure do.
asserted
Performance → do → ?
The writer is the author of The Shady Economics of International Aid, and holds a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge.
asserted
writer → hold → Cambridge
…and 1 more, not listed.
The Aporia
