FINALLY, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has announced the much politically hyped five years plan 92024-2029) “Uraan Pakistan” which is a home-grown national economic plan pledging to revive the country’s macro-economy. It consists of the “Five Es” Exports; E-Pakistan; Equity and Empowerment; Environment, Food and Water Security; and Energy and Infrastructure. It is a good omen that it is a holistic, comprehensive, timely and futuristic strategic road map primarily based on export-led growth through collaborative approach doubling the country’s exports with consultation of all the main stakeholders. Moreover, it is progressive, productive and participatory ensuring immense social development, economic stability and sustainability and further diversification of exports which is commendable.
During his keynote speech the PM Shehbaz rightly termed export-led growth as ultimate saviour of Pakistan and his recipe heavily depends on cheap inputs, greater investment, curtail imports encouraging competition, efficiency, and export-led growth. Furthermore, promotion and expansion of the digital and technology sectors, particularly the use and adoption of artificial intelligence should be a way forward to achieve these desired goals in the days to come. The creation of political harmony to advance privatization efforts, prevent losses, and reduce inefficiency in state-owned enterprises vividly reflects fundamental economic wisdom, emphasizing the need for politico-economic consensus to steer both the economy and politics in the right direction. Aiming to attract a target of US$10 billion FDIs per annum seems to be on the higher side because of many complex and complicated reasons and structural flaws. Ideally domestic investment should be promoted and encouraged first. During his speech, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar rightly stated that petty politics must be buried for the prosperity of Pakistan thus Charter of Economy is the way forward. However, Dar’s belief in Pakistan joining the G-20 seems to be unrealistic in the days to come. Meanwhile, the finance minister emphasized on achieving sustainable growth showing his desire to operate without any boom and bust cycles which seems to be unnatural because of the import based economy. Thus constant and continued implementation of the structural reforms must remain elusive and imperative for sustained economic growth.
Aurangzeb further elaborated that Uraan Pakistan has multidimensional plans mainly stimulating private investment, key to getting more jobs, higher incomes and a low cost of living through a more competitive economy. The finance minister said the second pillar of the economy was stimulating exports, a key mechanism to drive productivity growth, and the third was optimising public finances, which was central to stability and sustained growth. However, there is an urgent need to introduce and implement a separate tax policy unit which should independently report to the Ministry of Finance. Interestingly, it will be managed by people of the private and public sectors ensuring policy continuity. Moreover, tax leakages will be plugged through the use of data analytics.
Independent experts and economists doubt about achieving a sustainable GDP growth of 6 percent by 2028, creating one million additional jobs annually, securing additional US$10bn private investment per year and hitting an export target of US$60bn by FY2028. In summary, on paper “Uraan Pakistan” is a perfect plan to accelerate economic growth and achieve all wonders however, it would be a living miracle to achieve all of these with current snail pace growth, political cliché, deteriorating law & order situation, surging terrorism, safety & security issues, sick mentality of the higher bureaucracy, high rates of corruption, low national capacity building, imbalanced economic patterns/policies, high inflationary trends, high poverty and unemployment and last but not the least, import based economy.
Furthermore, drastic shrinking of the middle class in the country, high income tax rates especially on salaried class, price hike, ever increasing demands of the IMF and unstoppable rise to cartels & cronies, merit, merciless land grabbing and, most importantly, institutional support to elite group have become hallmark of our state, society and the system eroding the common prosperity and personal dignity of the general masses. Complete closure of textiles (spinning & weaving units) in Faisalabad is one of the prime examples of our ailing policy making and total failure and ineffectiveness of our industrial policy working in isolation causing huge loss to the national economy.
There is no concept of youth entrepreneurship and empowerment of women in the country due to which the new generation is fleeing out and huge brain drain is diminishing our future prospects in foreign lands and only left is a TikTok generation fully empty from a sound mind and soul. Our business and trading capacities are also getting rusted. All metropolitan’s business communities and chambers of commerce do not have any successful business and investment model. Everybody is in search of a short-cut to become a billionaire. Thus obsession of greed and personal whims & wishes has become one of the main hurdles in the development of a business oriented environment.
Ongoing political circus of the country has only produced “dwarfs” working against the sustainable development mechanisms in the country creating more trouble for the common people. Political instability is now being maintained because of gaining some personal favours which has nothing to do with pure and simple democracy. Clergy has become an essential part of wealth accumulation, badly spoiling purity of the faith and divine spirit. Thus a mad race of powerfulness is going to cheat the common followers through self-claimed purity giving momentum to disbelievers.
Medical hospitals have become “money minting” machines cursing the common people and the poor and clearly denying the basic right of public health and medications. Educational institutions have become centres of mockery, nothing to do with creativity and productivity. The author suggests a complete overhauling of outdated national narrative, unfriendly economic policy, unrealistic strategic priorities and safety & security in the country. We must have a group of applied economists, experts of social marketing, gurus of community development, staunch supporters of easy, smooth, speedy and cheap justice, supporters of merit and above all pro-people and pro-business policies instead of personal gains and goons. We must need to have a pure and simple democratization of resources and distribution of wealth otherwise the existing elitist economy will achieve no “Uraan/rise”.
—The writer is President, Pak-China Corridor of Knowledge, Executive Director, CSAIS, regional expert: China, CPEC & BRI.
