Throughout the years, Pakistan has been facing a calamitous economic situation. Pakistan has tried everything from nationalization to privatization to bring some sort of stability to their national economy. Despite of all these efforts, Pakistan has found itself in international monetary fund emergency unit, even after receiving multiple foreign monetary aids. However, it has been widely discussed that the answer of this problem could be in Pakistan’s infrastructure. A complete revamp could help meet much of the local demands such as energy, transportation, clean drinking water and most importantly, create many job opportunities for the citizens. This could be accomplished if Pakistan focused on some of the areas where they are struggling the most such as: Planning, development of infrastructure, agriculture and education.
Pakistan is not in an alarming economic status by chance, unsustainable growth, poor infrastructure, and primarily, planning, are some of the areas Pakistanis are currently struggling in their efforts to sustain growth. For instance, Pakistan’s GDP has shown and confirm a constant flimsy economy throughout the years.[1] Successive governments have failed to realize the severe impact that the lack of updates to their existing infrastructure is causing to the national economy. Clearly, short sightedness of planners is one of the reasons that have lead to the prevailing of constant sharp declines in Pakistan’s economy.
According to World Economic Forum Survey (2006-07), Pakistan is ranked 67th in 125 countries which were evaluated in survey.[2] This clearly depicts the need for not only building new infrastructure but also to maintain existing ones as well. Over the years, the government has failed to properly prioritize its infrastructure projects. For instance, it is widely known that if Pakistan had build its road links prior to heavily investing in Gwardar port, it would have earned substantial revenues on road infrastructure by the time it would have been completed.[5] Unfortunately, poor planning skills have hurt Pakistan severely, even in recent times. Pakistan has also not been able to properly allocate funding to their infrastructure to maintain a sustained development. Nonetheless, due to lack of capacity, the government has also failed to spend their allocated funds in one fiscal year adequately.
One of the main reasons why infrastructure planning is at is current state is because of human resource management. Meager human resource planning and failure to build capacity for a skilled human resource pool has remained core reason for lack of sustained growth in Pakistan since its creation.[3] Recently, there has been an urgent need to invest more in institutions and facilities in order to build and enhance human resource capacity. For instance, universities, training centers, role oriented facilities etc. both under public and private sector so that a constant and steady growth rate can be achieved. This is something that needs to be accomplished not only in their infrastructure but also in different areas of the country.
Furthermore, the development of new infrastructure has a more cataclysmic background story. Historically, the prime drivers behind most of the infrastructure projects that take place in Pakistan are because of political incentives. During the 1990s Pakistan wanted to connect with landlocked countries of Central Asia though first gestures were initiated, it was quickly known that the project was politically motivated.[3] The idea was very plausible to make Pakistan a gateway for these landlocked countries to Arabian Sea through ports of Karachi and Gawadar. Unfortunately, the whole project was ruined as it was initiated between two cities of Lahore and Islamabad, which were not industrial cities but were very much under political influence from the government at that time. Massive input into this project never gave stipulated return on investment and after years Pakistan is still unable to connect its own port of Gawadar with its own industrial cities like Lahore, Faisalabad, Sialkot etc.[3] This port is just connected to another port in the East, Karachi, but has no road or rail linkages towards the North where most of industrial states are working and all of them are only connected to Karachi port.[3] This is again affecting investment made in Gawadar port, as there is no major trading activities taking place and local activities such as commerce and agriculture have been widely affected.
Historically, Pakistan has been an agriculture-based country and more than half of the country’s population is associated with agriculture.[4] Pakistan has the world’s largest canal system and due to lack of adopting new management practices, it has failed to provide any significant value to the country. Not only that, but Pakistan also failed in incorporating the latest technology into this system which ultimately resulted in poor growth of crops. Consequently, Pakistan has ignored energy and water infrastructure, which has majorly affected foreign investment – measure of tolerance and ability of avoiding uncertain situations on the face of crisis in the country – which has reduced to alarming level during the last couple of years.[5] However, this has been affecting them not only at an international level but also domestically, since Pakistan’s local investors are most of the time, uncertain of their investment. That is, investors keep their fingers crossed, as situation regarding availability of basic facilities is getting worse and have no idea what the outcome will be.
On the other hand, energy shortfall in Pakistan has reached up to 4000 MW in industrial cities like Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad are among the most affected cities.[5] Unfortunately, instead of creating new jobs this shortfall of energy has forced the shutdown of many industrial units leaving thousands unemployed. This is worrisome, since Pakistanis are directly liked with agriculture and related businesses, making infrastructure functionality and stability an essential part of Pakistan.
According to a report published by the World Bank “contributions infrastructure makes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”, which are goals that many of the United Nations countries have agreed to complete before 2015.[3] These goals achieve both directly (such as reducing the proportion of people without basic sanitation and reliable access to safe drinking water, or making housing and shelter more accessible) and indirectly, by supporting MDGs related to human development (e.g. education, of health, empowerment women).[1] Having a reliable agriculture infrastructure will enable each country to increase its land under cultivation to fulfill needs for masses.
Incidentally, Pakistan is lacking in poor infrastructure, and because of this, they are also lacking behind in social development. Unfortunately, when it comes to discussing the social sector of a country, growth of education and health are the first topics that come to light. Nonetheless, Pakistan’s social infrastructure not only reflects its overall development but it also heavily contributes to sustaining its growth. However, due to lack of interest, limited resources and other problems both in the health and education sector infrastructure have not been able to efficiently develop.[4] Urban centers in Pakistan are expanding by every passing day but health and education infrastructure remains largely the same. Moreover, deficiency in health and education is pushing even more young people into activities like militancy and street crimes.[6] Unfortunately, due to lack of facilities and opportunities, many parts of rural populations are poring into cities which is adding to management problems in cities like Lahore and Karachi.[5] These major cities are experiencing rapid growth in population due to migration of semi-skilled and non-skilled people.[5] This is a problem because this adds to unemployment in cities and also adds pressure on existing infrastructure, such as in the transportation system. Therefore, inadequacies in health infrastructure are resulting in spread of communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Furthermore, if actions are taken in order to improve infrastructure, this could provide sufficient growth to tourism, transport industries that could potentially bring people of diverse views and beliefs together. For instance, Pakistan has the world’s three largest and highest mountain ranges, world’s largest salt mine, world’s 9th largest desert and many other places which still need to be developed and improved to attract foreign tourists.[3] Moreover, developing infrastructure for these sites could generate job opportunities for citizens. Not only that, but a further development of these sites could potentially provide opportunities for locals and foreign entrepreneurs to establish businesses in those locations and attract more people to those places. In other words, it will create a greater demand for foreign investment into Pakistan. Other than job opportunities built, infrastructure will also help to raise standard of living of citizens, which will ultimately help them reduce poverty and current conditions.[3]
Pakistan overall has not been doing pretty well historically, although at one point, Pakistan was actually at the same level as other nations that somehow, took advantage of their development opportunities and are now more stable and prosperous than Pakistan. Currently, we are living in a world where information and technology is king.[2] The progress speeds of many countries are remarkable. China got independence two years after Pakistan but it has increased its speed of development up to a great extent. For many years, China has had the status of world’s fastest growing economy.[2] Incredibly, China has managed to get a complete control over the markets of many countries, not only making it very affordable but also very easy for other countries to deal with China. Its trade abilities have captured a great foreign exchange reserve.[1] On the other hand, Pakistan had such opportunity on their hands, but because of poor leadership skills, the country never got to go too far in their development. Also, Pakistan has not been able to make an effort to efficiently utilize their local resources to increase their exports.
It is very noticeable that countries such Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are working very hard. These are countries that were previously more underdeveloped than Pakistan and their hard work has enabled them to face the challenges in their nations in a very dignified way. These countries have made development up to the extent that it has become a far cry for Pakistan to assimilate with their stands.[1] These countries have achieved this position of stabilization through their appropriate economic strategies, excellent foreign policies and educational policies. That is, something that Pakistan is lacking very clearly.
Furthermore, the world has become a global village. High officials do not have to go to their offices anymore, and many of them control the majority of their official matters electronically. This is unfortunately, not the case in Pakistan. For instance, the rate of progress in order to face the technological advancements in society is very high in India as compared to Pakistan. The Indian software engineers have achieved remarkable successes; they have managed to make exceptional innovations in this field. Consequently, the Indian government has been able to efficiently provide support to the majority of their people. Not only that, but the Indian economy has become very strong being able to benefit the female employment ratio in the country, also making it possible for women to work with the men in almost all the professions.
As a conclusion, the importance of infrastructure is imperative for a sustained growth in Pakistan. Pakistan is ideally located on the map where it can use its infrastructure for its own growth as well as for helping other countries nearby. Infrastructure is one weak link in this route of prosperity for a nation of 170+ million people. Far more important it is to know that government organization and stability holds the key to formulate policies so that it can provide a conductive environment to private sector to invest more in infrastructure development of the country.
Pakistan definitely needs to step up its game and solve many political and regional problems peacefully through increased interdependency on countries through its land. Furthermore, as it has been discussed in the paper, Pakistan needs to figure out better ways to better plan their financial spending in order to grow steadily. Pakistan either needs to have someone else take over their government and make things happen, or they need to stop having leadership that is incentivized by money in order to do things they should not do. Also, it has been made clear how important it is to establish a strong infrastructure in order to not only better the economy as a whole, but most importantly, better agriculture, health and education. All of which, are important issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible.
