by IMTIAZ GUL
You may make progress in an island but development beyond that level is difficult if surroundings are backward
As Pakistan remains embroiled in internal power struggles, its external friends and foes wonder where the country is politically and economically headed. The circumstances post 26th Amendment offer enough evidence to forecast the political direction Pakistan has taken. The economic distress is writ large too.
The decision of Qatar’s Al Thani Group to withdraw its $2.09 billion investment from Pakistan’s Port Qasim Power Project underscores Pakistan’s growing reputation for broken contracts and unpaid obligations. No surprise foreign direct investment plummeted to a mere $26 million by September this year — compared to India which boasts more than $81 billion in the same period. The Qatari group’s pullout — preceded by the exit of global firms like Shell, TotalEnergies, Pfizer, Sanofi, Telenor, Uber, IGI and Microsoft inter alia and partial or full closure of even domestic prime producers such as Gul Ahmed Textiles — epitomises a fractured system that is asphyxiating under the acute indifference and incompetence of a power-centric elite that loathes real reform.
The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — often touted by Minister Ahsan Iqbal as a game-changer, a phrase our Chinese friends never favoured — suffers from the same malaise: lofty, irrational talk, little walk. Over a decade into CPEC, a number of Chinese academics, intellectuals and officials, who had dreamed of an economically viable, self-sustaining Pakistan with the help of CPEC, today sound disillusioned — wondering if Pakistan’s rulers are concerned at all about the economic viability and development of the country.
Some points from conversations with Chinese friends are worth pondering:
• China came in to improve infrastructure and help the people of Pakistan and not to please a particular political priority.
• CPEC was intrinsically designed to focus on areas that needed development, regardless of who was proposing what.
• Ten years on, big investment ($25.4 billion) has not helped the approaches to governance — decision-making and implementation — nor has the security improved.
• Holding high-profile events with the PM and COAS at closely guarded venues swarming with intelligence and security officials are optically bad for foreign investors, who always look for comfortable zones to invest their money.
• Pakistan’s policymakers keep telling us: “We are doing our best to protect you.” Little do they realise that the issue at stake is not about protecting individual Chinese nationals but about protecting the long-term Pakistan-China relationship.
• In security conversations, Pakistanis often lecture us on geopolitics as the reason of insecurity. Do they take us for fools? We know what is happening around but such challenges and risks need to be managed — the way China gradually defied and eventually blunted the entire Western opposition to it. The talk needs to be followed up with calculated walk.
• When even your own people are not investing, why would then outsiders risk their money, particularly when the energy sector continues to reel from the crippling circular debt?
• They also succinctly point to the minister for planning Ahsan Iqbal’s long speeches as an example. If a minister in this era doesn’t value the time and takes his audience for students then something serious is certainly missing. This age dictates precision, focus and execution and not lofty, lengthy rhetoric.
• China developed because it took underdeveloped regions along but Pakistan’s peripheral regions — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan — remain excluded, conflict-scarred and badly managed. How can the country progress if these regions are step-motherly treated?
This reminds me of the ancient Chinese philosophy of development: you may make progress in an island but development beyond that level is difficult if the surroundings are backward and turbulent. They keep emphasising a cross-party consensus for national development and not just CPEC.
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