Call to hire local experts to fix Pakistan’s economy

Four U’s of Pakistan -- unsustainability, unstability, unequitability and uncertainty -- are the root causes of the bad economic condition of Pakistan. Five Cs are needed to make progress: courage, competence, credibility, commitment, coordination and compassion.

All governments are responsible for the bad economic condition in the country, and we cannot blame any one of them. Today, we compare ourselves with India, Bangladesh and China, but the statistics have proven our position in terms of per capita income as very dismal.

Foreign direct investment is very low. The main contributor is China whose share is 48 per cent of the total FDI.

This was stated by prominent economist and director, Faculty Development Academy, Comsats University, Dr Aneel Salman, in a webinar on the topic of ‘Deciphering Pakistan Economy’, organised by Dr Safia Minhaj, assistant professor, Department of Economics, University of Karachi. More than 130 students attended the webinar.

He emphasised that we should increase our budget for health and education sectors and give more attention to these two sectors as compared to the real estate sector. Another bigger dilemma is that governments always try to hire personalities from outside Pakistan. Why do we not rely on our own citizens and give them confidence who are very well aware about the ground realities of the economy?

Serious problems, such as the system failure, that entail the saving-investment gap, and the trade gap, short-term strategies, liquidity problems and the myopic Pakistani mindset were discussed in detail. Implementation of the Mop Approach, Increasing productivity, focusing on agrarian development, education and health were the main points thoroughly highlighted by Dr Aneel Salman, on which the students showed acceptance on the theory he presented.

The discussion started off with clear-cut statistics, including indices such as the human development index, human capital index, global competitiveness index and world happiness index, which led to the evaluation that Pakistan has been on the last part of the leg on every index except the world happiness index.

Dr Aneel also mentioned the thoughts of the anti-industry macro framework in Pakistan as described by Dr Kaiser Bengali. The discussion moved on with mentioning prominent macroeconomic concepts such as devaluation and Marshall Lerner condition which doesn’t apply here in Pakistan.

Dr Aneel’s highly curated presentation mentioned his set of ideas that were insightful for the students. Further keeping the session lively, Dr Aneel engaged students, asking them about this scenario. It was shared that we have knocked the door of the IMF for 13 times. The session concluded with the Q/A session. Dr Aneel answered questions along with Dr Safia, who used her unique approach towards viewing our economy.