Pakistan beats India at geopolitics

Using its strategic geopolitical positioning, Pakistan has scored several economic advantages leaving India behind, said an article published in Forbes.

Pakistan, it said, successfully negotiated with the US and China for a series of financial benefits and exploited its proximity to Afghanistan to get its huge foreign debts written off from Washington.

“Beijing needed a western route to the Middle East, and Africa–China’s second continent. Ideologically that is, which can explain why Beijing committed $46 billion to China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),” says the Forbes article.

Pakistani government under General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf was successful in having its huge external debt, constituting 60% of GDP, written off.

This led to a major strengthening in Pakistani currency and an increase in inflow of foreign capital, with the country subsequently enjoying a burgeoning financial landscape, wrote contributing Forbes writer Panos Mourdoukoutas, who is a professor of economics at New York's LIU Post and Columbia University.

More recently, China's interest in investment in Pakistan as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has brought the country into spotlight. While tensions remain between Chinese and Indian leadership, Pakistan has fully benefitted from the next-door economic giant.

China has also blocked several attempts by India to join the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG), as well as sided with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, the US magazine noted.