Leading Issues in the Economy of Pakistan: Agenda for Reforms There are two levels of aggregation. The first is the aggregation of individual indices to a composite index of performance in a particular area. The indices of performance in different areas are then aggregated into the overall Economic Performance Index(EPI). The detailed methodology is given in the Annexure-3. The estimated values of the indices in each area of performance in the three epochs are given in Table 1.12. Table 1.12: Indices of Performance in Different Areas and the composite Economic Performance Index Area of Performance Era Average PPP PML(N) PTI • Achieving higher growth 0.176 0.485 0.360 0.340 • Promoting Larger Investment 0.508 0.544 0.404 0.485 • Containing the Rate of Inflation 0.333 0.831 0.499 0.554 • Sustaining the External Balance of Payments 0.533 0.181 0.406 0.373 • Limiting the Burden of Public Debt 0.627 0.651 0.317 0.532 • Raining the Standard of Living 0.204 0.468 0.767 0.480 • Providing more and better Employment Opportunities 0.385 0.330 0.467 0.394 • Tackling Low Level of Human Development and Poverty 0.484 0.399 0.436 0.440 Overall Economic Performance Index(EPI) 0.373 0.447 0.442 0.444 A number of important conclusions emerge from the numbers in Table 1.12 as follows: i) The overall EPI for the three tenures combined from 2008-90 to 2021-22 is 0.444. It is not even at 0.5. This implies that performance of governments during the four ­teen-year period can be classified only as at the intermediate level. ii) The EPI for the PML(N) and PTI gov ­Poor Intermediate Good ernments is remarkably close. The EPI< 0.4 0.4 £ EPI< 0.5 0.5 £ EPI EPI of the PPP government is sig ­nificantly lower. This can at least be Achieving higher Promoting Containing the Growth Investment Rate of Inflation partially to the presence of more Sustaining the Raising the Limiting the negative exogenous factors. Also, External Balance Standard of Burden of the performance of the PTI govern ­of Payments Living Public Debt ment was affected by COVID-19. Providing more Tackling the Low iii) The performance in different areas can be grouped as follows over the and better Employment Opportunities Level of Social Development and Poverty 14-year period as follows: 20