On Tuesday, 21st October 2025. Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Professor Emeritus and Chairman of the Centre for Excellence in Islamic Finance (CEIF), conducted a lecture on “Institutional Development and Reforms in Pakistan” to participants of the 38th Senior Management Course at the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.

Dr. Ishrat Hussain spoke about his experiences on institutional reforms over the period and in different governments. He discussed about the scope, efforts and challenges in the way of reforms, these efforts received and the journey through these challenges to development of reform framework. He spoke about the efforts made in respect of State Own Enterprises (SOEs) and proposed reform agenda, that was partially approved. Dr. Ishrat while speaking about his reforms in the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), he referred to case study on these reforms and mentioned the successes achieved and unfinished agenda with reasonings. These reforms included digitisation, automation and inclusion high qualified professionals in the central bank.

On the civil services reforms, he shared reforms in promotional and placement framework that was later on implemented by the government to an extent too. Dr. Ishrat shared reforms development of promotional KPIs in this regard and continuous evaluation for the senior bureaucrats as backbone of institutional development and reforms. He promoted for professional excellence and reforms in recruitment specially for professional services where initial recruitment shall be based on relevant education at secondary education level. Frequent elimination of deadwood has also been discussed to allow best civil servant to rise. He also spoke about the disparities in the pay packages in different cadres as well as gazetted and non-gazetted streams of employees. The session concluded with a Q&A with participants exploring reforms, and mechanisms for continuous evaluation for the future.