Pakistan gradually losing international trade over poor governance

Comment

By Mansoor Ahmad

LAHORE: Pakistan has gradually lost its advantageous global positioning in trade mainly due to deterioration of all governance standards. This is evident from the dismally low growth of our exports compared with many once lowly placed Asian economies.

In 1962, Pakistan’s exports were higher than Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and equal to that of China; today we are hovering around $24-25 billion, while exports from Malaysia and the other three East Asian economies has crossed $150 billion, with China’s have touched $1.9 trillion. We lost our way somewhere in 70s. Still, at the start of the century we were positioning ourselves as the trade corridor for Central Asia; today our road infrastructure is in shambles; Railways have almost derailed and PIA gone out of air.

Transportation cost of a 40 feet container from Karachi to Lahore is higher than the shipment cost of a similar container from China to Karachi. This is because we have made the cheapest and quickest mode of transport - Railways - redundant despite having excellent rail track. Affordable utility rates and getting a secure job is more important for a common man. The country has gradually moved from budding manufacturing hub to a trading nation.

Jobs in trade and services are fluid, while jobs in manufacturing are more secure. Pakistan now lags behind all regional countries in industrial growth due to inconsistent government policies. Unlike early sixties, there is no long-term growth plan given by any government since 1980. During Ayub era, technical education budget was 13.4 percent of the total education budget. Today it has been reduced to only three percent with the result that we are facing acute skill shortages in our human resource.

Public services have not been reformed. The government regularly increases the salaries of its employees by hefty margins without ensuring improvement in delivery of services to the public and state.

The result is that the institutions continue to deteriorate while their budget regularly increases. In Singapore the increase in salaries of the state employees is linked to annual growth in GDP. The salary of public servants increase is limited to 70 percent of the growth in GDP. This works as an incentive for bureaucracy to strive hard for better economic growth to ensure handsome increase in their salaries. Not only the federal government but all provincial governments are responsible for the ills that the nation currently faces. The federal government is blamed for instable rupee, power and gas crisis, and high petroleum rates.

All of this has overshadowed the fact that the provincial governments have also abdicated their responsibility to ensure better quality of life and security of population. Law and order is a provincial subject. Increase in crime rate and terror activity occurred as the provincial governments failed to keep a strict watch on the district governments to ensure that civic rules were fully observed.

The pathetic educational outcomes and pathetic health services are an outcome of this negligence. Efficient service delivery provides immense relief to the common man in the form of saved time and better health.

The food adulteration at lower level by non-documented sector requires some homework and public awareness campaign, but even the documented manufacturers are not following the law. Absence of expiry date on the labels of numerous packed food items is testimony to this fact.

The absence of expiry date becomes more evident after the availability of similar imported products in Pakistan has become common. It was the Punjab government that in 1998 made it mandatory for edible oil manufacturers to mention date of expiry and ingredients on the labels of their packing, but the law was not fully implemented. Also, this law was not adopted by other provinces. Time has come to cover all edible products under this law throughout the country.

Overloading in intra city routes is common in all major cities of the country. There was a time when all taxis and rickshaws had meters with fixed per mile fares by district governments. The authorities have become so helpless that they have now given freehand to the auto rickshaws and taxis to charge the passengers at their will. The writ of the fully autonomous provincial governments has diluted substantially in over three decades.