Vacuum filled: Textbook on banking and finance launched

Author tries to make dry subject as interesting as a ‘Bollywood movie’.

KARACHI: Blame it on either the absence of institutional support or a lack of eagerness on the part of the academia, the reality remains that business students in Pakistan had so far no textbook on banking and finance that described the complex relationship between the financial system and economic development in Pakistani context.

It was this academic vacuum that made Dr Shakil Faruqi write a two-volume book titled “Financial System and Economic Development – Pakistan,” which was launched at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) on Monday in a ceremony chaired by IBA Dean and Director Dr Ishrat Husain and attended by IBA faculty members, students, economists and many former and current State Bank officials.

Formerly associated with the World Bank, Dr Faruqi has a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He now teaches at the Lahore School of Economics (LSE), which is also the publisher of the two-part book.

Speaking on the occasion, former head of World Bank’s Learning Centre Tariq Hussain termed the book unique because it explained the theory of banking and finance by linking it to its actual application in the economy of Pakistan.

He said the chapters on Islamic finance discussed the issue in a purely academic manner. “It says what Islamic finance is and what it’s not. Also, it does this in an academic, rather than argumentative, way.”

Addressing the ceremony, Dr Faruqi said his students knew about the US Federal Reserve more than they knew about the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) because the textbooks they used were by American authors. Saying that his students often complained finance was a dry subject, Dr Faruqi stated, jokingly, that his task was to make it as interesting as a Bollywood movie.

The first volume of the book has chapters on the financial system, interest rate, financial savings, credit system, Islamic banking, monetary management, etc. The second volume has chapters on the financial market, securities market, assets, yields, returns, trading in derivatives, capital market, long-term debt market, stock market, portfolio financing, etc.

The first and second volumes of the book cost Rs1,900 and Rs1,600, respectively.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2012.