Pakistan’s Vision 2025, launched by the Ministry of Planning, Development & Reform, rightly outlines an ambitious roadmap to position the country among the world’s top 25 economies by 2025 and ultimately among the top 10 by 2047. The plan is structured around seven key pillars: developing human and social capital, achieving sustained and inclusive growth, ensuring good governance and institutional reform, attaining energy, water, and food security, fostering private sector-led growth, building a competitive knowledge economy and enhancing modern infrastructure with regional connectivity. The emphasis on human development and infrastructure is particularly commendable, as these are foundational pillars for sustainable progress.
While the vision is comprehensive and well-conceived, the challenge lies not in strategic planning but in effective implementation. Planning Minister Mr. Ehsan Iqbal, known for his strategic acumen from his previous tenure in the PML(N) government, has demonstrated a clear understanding of what is required at the macro level. However, any government at the federal level, often falls short when it comes to translating such plans into actionable outcomes. The lack of full ownership of strategic visions and their integration into the processes, protocols, and policies of federal and provincial governments and ministries has historically been a significant gap.
If Vision 2025 does not achieve buy-in at all levels of governance and is not implemented rigorously across the board, it risks becoming another intellectual exercise rather than a transformative national agenda. The 18th Amendment marked a pivotal turning point in Pakistan’s political and governance structure, transferring significant powers from the federation to the provinces. While the intent of the 18th Amendment was to empower provinces and ensure more localized governance, it inadvertently weakened the federation’s financial and administrative cohesion. The decentralization of powers left the federal government with diminished revenue streams and limited control over key governance areas, while provinces benefitted from surplus budgets and greater autonomy.
Post-18th Amendment, Pakistan’s political landscape has become increasingly fragmented, with different parties governing the federation and provinces, often pursuing divergent or even opposing strategic visions. This lack of cohesion undermines federal strategic plans, reducing them to theoretical exercises. Provinces, often governed by parties different from the center, prioritize the agendas and preferences of their respective leaderships. With greater autonomy, provinces now wield more effective authority over resource allocation and execution, often surpassing the federal government in these areas.
Multiple power centers within the federation also counter the implementation of the vision — the Parliament is often reluctant to endorse federal policies, a judiciary is prone to encroaching on executive functions and provincial administrations with conflicting priorities—compound the problem. These dynamics leave the federal government paralyzed, unable to implement cohesive and meaningful development plans, including Vision 2025.
As a result, the vision developed at the center—typically spearheaded by the Planning Division—is frequently disregarded, set aside, or even not being read, reducing it to an intellectual exercise in futility, rather than assuming the stature of a Magna Carta or the guiding principles for all tiers of governments.
Moreover, with disproportional responsibility and accountability to meet the country budgetary needs often left the federal government grappling with severe financial constraints, struggling to fulfill its fundamental obligations such as debt servicing, defense spending and maintaining critical national infrastructure. As a result, the federal government has been reduced to seeking humiliating financial assistance from friendly nations and repeatedly turning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for bailouts.
These aid-seeking endeavors often come with stringent conditions, including austerity measures and policy adjustments dictated by the IMF and donor countries, which further exacerbate economic hardships for the populace. This dependency undermines the sovereignty of economic decision-making, leaving the federal government with little leverage to implement its strategic vision or pursue independent policy priorities. Ideally, the vision, mission, objectives and goals of such a strategic vision should be followed in letter and spirit, serving as guiding principles for the entire nation. All ministries, governments, departments and institutions should realign their strategies and execution plans to align with the central strategic directions.
They should also contribute to achieving the aims, objectives and goals of the strategic plan within specified timelines, with mechanisms in place to hold them responsible and accountable if these targets are not met. Only through such a unified and accountable approach can the true potential of a national vision be realized.Ultimately, the success of Vision 2025 will depend on its ability to transcend political divides and power struggles, galvanizing all stakeholders—government, civil society, the private sector and the establishment—toward a shared vision for national development. Without this unified approach, the Vision risks becoming another theoretical exercise rather than a transformative framework for the nation’s progress.
—The writer is a former Press Secretary to the President of Pakistan.
