Reportedly, the Prime Minister has approved the policy for posting of Trade Officers abroad. Among other things, it has been decided to earmark a 'quota' of 20% for expat Pakistanis, create trade clusters, and have IT-based monitoring and evaluation of performance of our trade diplomats. The good thing for our senior civil servants is that by the time it is time to evaluate the quality of the proposals they make they have moved on. The system provides them immunity from being held accountable for their policy inputs. The temptation to promise the moon, with no consequences to face if the moon remains as distant as before, is in-built.
Senior civil service is part of the policy making apparatus. We routinely shower abuse on the previous governments but have we ever questioned a Secretary for his role in policy failure?
We have no doubt the (then) Commerce Secretary made an excellent presentation, raising questions for which he himself had the answers, but did anyone in the room ask "what exactly do we expect our Trade Officers (TOs) to do? Can it not be done by other Embassy officers? What will be the impact on our exports if tomorrow we close down all 58 trade offices?"
How do you develop selection criteria and monitor performance when you are not sure of the specific requirements of the task? If exports go up should we give the TO a pat on the back; or recall him if exports go down? If he meets 30 buyers a month, promptly answers all the exporters' queries, sends well written reports on a regular basis, is he doing a great job?
The problem with Performance Indicators is that they are about outputs and not outcome. They do not capture results - you can meet any number of buyers and there will be no certainty of the 'conversion ratio' - interest generated translating into orders placed.
You can have the most competent and committed TO, but can he really control outcome, given all the variables? He can generate genuine buyer interest but he has no control over price, quality, delivery time - and exporter interest in his market.
Can the Commerce Secretary really establish product and market-specific targets? It will be an exercise in futility even if it is done most professionally, even with the aid of the National Trade Data Analytics System that is being developed. With little elasticity in the export base it will at best lead to diverting exports from one market to another, without really adding to our total exports.
Enter the expats. Given the complexities of the job, how exactly will the 'quota' for expats help? Is the idea to please the diaspora or promote export growth? We have nothing to say if it is the former, except to add that in that case we might as well fix a quota for them in our Embassies.
If the received wisdom is they can do a better job of promoting exports one would like to know the basis of that bold assumption. Yes, local knowledge and speaking the language is an asset but how do we balance that against knowledge of our export issues and exporter needs? Also, hadn't we addressed the local knowledge and language issue by providing, where needed, locally recruited marketing officers?
The argument is not to deny overseas Pakistanis the opportunity to compete and get selected; indeed, the existing policy provides for it and we have had instances of expats serving as Trade Officers (mostly with dubious results). What is incomprehensible is the 20% quota. It is wrong, arguably against the law of the land, and unlikely to work.
Before proceeding to establish 'entitlements' and performance indicators the policy maker has to address the fundamental questions of what is needed to be done and what competencies are needed to do it right.
There is no way a TO - fully committed, whether expat or domestic - can be part of exporters' sales force. Even after intense training he will not have sufficient product knowledge - from garments to footballs to carpets to pharmaceuticals to seafood - to act as 'salesman'. And in these days of 'internet of things' they are really not needed to provide buyers' list, and who imports what from where at what price.
Trade diplomacy? They can have only a supporting role in these days of summit diplomacy. Any event, this would require restricting offices to the capitals (and not, for instance, in LA, Chicago, and New York in the case of the US), and for the EU to Brussels alone.
If indeed the principal function of a TO is trade diplomacy why can't it be left to professional diplomats? It will be a weak argument to suggest they don't know enough about the intricacies of international trade. How is the professional diplomat less advantaged than a DMG officer serving the government of Punjab?
Different countries have approached the overlapping demands of commercial representation and trade diplomacy differently. Models vary from merger of Trade and Foreign Affairs ministries (Australia, Canada etc.), to specialized export agencies (JETRO, KOTRA), to Ministry of Trade having exclusive responsibility, with only a minimal role of Ambassadors (India, Pakistan).
We have never carried out an evaluation of our trade offices, but almost all will agree our current model is not working. It neither does a good job of export marketing nor meets acceptable standards of trade diplomacy. We need to do some lateral thinking.
The first thing to do would be to separate trade diplomacy from trade policy and make it a Foreign Office responsibility. Coordination issues will be a lesser challenge than continuing to persist with a model that is structurally flawed. Foreign Office will of course have to augment its capability, perhaps by having a specialized sub-cadre to which experienced officers from other groups could be inducted.
For export marketing there is no better alternative than having Trade Associations open their offices abroad. They know their needs best and should be encouraged to set up overseas regional offices through part-financing by the government or the Export Development Fund.
Of course, both these proposals will meet stiff resistance from the Ministry of Commerce. But isn't it time to put vested interests aside? Votaries of Naya Pakistan should give new ideas a chance.
shabirahmed@yahoo.com