It’s difficult to say whether or not Pakistan Business Council (PBC) has given a clean chit to PTI government. PBC’s lens of analyses is obvious and long known: it’s Make in Pakistan – using which the advocacy body has recently published a progress report where they have taken a stock of latest federal budget and overall business and economy related measures taken by the government over last year.
Their tagline is rather nuanced. It states: “despite some significant reforms, a lot remains to be done. It is still difficult to do business in Pakistan.” That said all things considered PBC’s view on economy seems optimistic. “It is a case of glass half full rather than half empty,” the PBC said in its report released earlier this week.
It commends the government “for starting a journey of reforms that will take several years to bear fruit”. Although one could argue that if they don’t praise the government then who will, considering that theirs is the only private sector body that is directly or indirectly represented in the government through its office holders and its advisors or frequently hired consultants.
Using the lens of Make in Pakistan, PBC’s progress report talks about a wide variety of items enlisted in a checklist manner, reproducing which is futile when people can best read it on their own. But suffice to say that in PBC’s view, progress has begun for most of the critical items such as FTA, taxation, documentation, energy and so forth.
That said exchange rate overvaluation is one area where the PBC thinks there is nothing pending anymore, following “33 percent adjustment in the value of the rupee vs. the USD in last 12 months”. The IMF shares this view, where in its latest staff report the global lender said that “the latest depreciation points to the REER coming close to its equilibrium level.”
There are a few areas, however, that the PBC progress reports could improve; one hopes these progress reports will be a periodic affair.
First, it would be better if the report card comes with the classification of Make in Pakistan reforms in short, medium and long-term action targets, and evaluation of progress in light of that classification. For instance, FTA with China has been revised but those with others have not. Does this mean any government has performed poorly in so far as FTA revisions are concerned; surely not all FTAs could have been revised in less than a year.
Ergo, the PBC should list its priorities and sequence of reforms. One can agree or disagree with that sequence or priority but at least stakeholders would know what the country’s most influential business advocacy body is rooting for and in what priority.
Second, as the country’s most influential business advocacy body, the PBC also needs to put together a reform agenda that may not necessarily be directly ‘Making in Pakistan’ per se but is nevertheless critical for the ecosystem necessary to Make in Pakistan. These include aviation, rail and road transportation, technology and fin-tech, and insurance, progress on which needs to be periodically tracked.
Lastly, equal emphasis needs to be given to dairy and livestock, crop farming, mine and minerals, tourism and other aspects of economy, developing which may lie in the provincial domain but they are important to lay the foundations of new economic growth prospects in the country.
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