The conference and consultations season has begun. While the World Bank is on a consultative spree to explore ideas for export competitiveness, the Asian Development Bank is gearing up for economic corridor development in Pakistan; it held its first consultative moot on the subject in Karachi yesterday.
Most ideas put on the table yesterday were the ones flagged all too frequently at such forums. But there were two less talked about ideas that stood out.
The first was put forward by Dr. Ishrat Hussain who argued that the atmosphere of blame game and inter-ministry/department turf wars is one of the key reasons why coordination in this country is an absolute mess. Earlier, the ADB Pakistan's economist Guntur Sugiyartohad pointed out a wide array of public sector agencies are involved in functions related to economic corridor development. The same is reproduced here in pictorial form.
This column contends that given Dr. Ishrat's experience in researching on and proposing civil service reforms, the government and the donor community should engage him to reduce governance overlaps in so far as CPEC related development is concerned. There may be a few others who can do this job, but few have analysed the civil service as he has done already.
To that end we propose to set up delivery units comprising of small core teams, who report directly to the PM in the centre and CM's in the case of provincial delivery units. Whether these units are set up in the existing governance structure or any other revised structure. But the idea is to give necessary powers to the delivery unit, and gauge their performance against predefined KPIs. Because if you give the new bus to the same old blind drivers who crashed the old bus, then the outcome will not be different this time around.
The second less talked about idea was proposed by Pakistan Business Council's CEO Ehsan Malik who proposed having different minimum wage in different parts of the province, reflecting the differences in the developmental status of those regions.
Malik said the practice is being followed in India, China and Bangladesh, and given growing pressures of urban migration, it only makes sense to roll out a similar policy here at home.
This policy may work for labour intensive industries, provided other primary and secondary factors of production are available to business in the hinterland. However, no such policy should be rolled out unless statistical bodies periodically measure the rural CPI as well as the cost of living index of industrial workers in those cities where the businesses might relocate in anticipation of lower minimum wage. And the lower minimum wage ought to be pegged to either rural or industrial CPI or the cost of living index of industrial workers.
On that note, it is paramount for development partners to focus on provincial statistical bodies, especially in so far as provincial GDP is concerned, and to engage provincial economics related departments. Post devolution, the responsibility of provinces has grown manifolds, from labour training to province specific sectors such as farming and mining. This realization does not reflect in the actions of the developmental partners, nor does it reflect in media coverage.