That Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had set ambitious targets in his Uraan Pakistan initiative is undisputed. It could be argued that flight rather than plodding requires ambition. However, one of the key targets of the programme, which is the export target of $60 billion by 2030, almost triple the $23 billion of 2023-2024, which, among other things, will lead to the creation of a million new jobs a year, has been put into doubt by the ministry responsible for its achievement, the Ministry of Commerce. The Ministry is either doing its best to avoid responsibility, or is engaged in the old bureaucratic pastime of protecting itself in the event of failure.
The Commerce Ministry has argued, rightly enough, that there are external factors at work. It must be conceded that the government has virtually no control over these external factors, and to mention is not to present a solution. US tariffs have arisen as a factor since the plan was launched at the turn of the New Year, one factor which the Ministry has mentioned is economic diplomacy, even though that is something for which the Ministry is directly responsible for, through the commercial counsellors and attachés it appoints directly. Then there are power tariffs, depending so deeply on the global oil price. The Commerce Ministry does have some suggestions, but they are the usual ones of rationalising custom tariffs and improving inter-ministerial tariffs. Recently, the Asian Development Bank also presented a report on Pakistan’s exports, and came up with the same tried and tested solutions. It seems the received wisdom is that Pakistan can’t really increase its exports by the amount indicated. However, it should be noted that the Prime Minister mentioned while introducing the Uraan Pakistan initiative that Pakistan had to earn dollars in order to pay off its debts.
This is precisely why there is such a pressing need to increase imports. There has to be a quantum jump, not incremental progress so beloved of bureaucrats, if Pakistan is able to service its debt. Mr Sharif didn’t just pluck a figure out of the air when setting the export target. The problem is not so much that the Commerce Ministry or the ADB don’t have a solution for increasing exports, but that Mr Sharif doesn’t either. For such explosive export growth, you either do something dramatic or find oil. And we haven’t found oil.
