Kudos to Miftah Ismail for pulling off the Board of Investment’s (BOI) International Investment Conference held in Islamabad this week – BOI’s first in recent history. Pakistan needs investment inflows, and it’s a good strategy to also invite prospective investors to the country under one platform than just go about making sales pitches all over the world.
The fact that the two-day event was launched by the PM himself and was well-attended by nearly all of his top cabinet members and other high-level government officials shows how strongly the government feels about the need to bring investment into the country. About a third of 162 delegates – most of which were from middle or top management - were from the energy and power sector - and that speaks volumes about the government’s priority areas.
But while there are many reasons to appreciate this effort, there are others that warrant some attention.
First, one couldn’t help but notice the lone and strong presence of the Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT) against the absence of investment promotion agencies (IPA) of other provinces. Not only that the PBIT had a stall of their own at the conference, but it had its team present at the event, engaged in active networking to woo the investors into the province.
Since until recently the PM used to take only CM Punjab on his foreign visits at the exclusion of other CMs, it was only natural to think that PBIT’s presence at BOI’s investment conference in the absence of other provincial IPAs was also because of some special favours extended to the province of Punjab.
However, sources in the PBIT as well as Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s IPAs told BR Research that while the BOI had invited all the provincial IPAs, it had not invited any of them to set up their own stalls or bring their team for networking. It was only through PBIT’s own initiative and persistent efforts that they were able to get their own stall at the conference.
Given the importance of such events, this issue brings two important points home: a) the BOI should have asked all the provincial IPAs to set up stalls and bring in their teams at the conference, and b) other provincial IPAs need to start being more proactive to be able to capitalize on opportunities like this.
The second point of concern pertains to conference outreach and housekeeping affairs. In the former context, if BOI really wishes to put Pakistan on the global investment map, then it would have done well to invite leading global media at the conference – especially the ones dedicated to investment and related affairs.
In terms of housekeeping, the fact that the delegates’ cards did not carry their names, designation and company names made the networking exercise very difficult. This issue may seem trivial, but if the idea behind such conferences is to network with prospective investors then how is one expected to target his or her networking efforts if the delegates do not have name cards? To that end, it was a poor show by the outsourced event management firm.
Lastly, nearly all the government officials gave their sweet talk about the incentives currently offered or those soon-to-be offered to prospective investors. But no emphasis was laid on the government’s plans to step up on governance reforms.
In a country where reform plans have been catching dust since many years – and whose government has precious little to show in terms of improvement in governance even after 18 months into power — how are investors expected to take Pakistan seriously if reform plans aren’t spelled out in detail with a promise to stick to it.
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