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Looking back just a few years, Pakistan’s economic team was universally aligned on export-led growth. The framework made perfect sense: simplified taxation, zero-rating systems such as the Export Finance Scheme, and concessional bank financing to make our exports globally competitive.
Yet, regular policy reversals increased exporters’ effective tax burden from a competitive 15–25 per cent to an astronomical 55pc, while export finance costs rose sharply. The easing of a little part of these policy excesses in the present budget is an admission of the wrong policy which made our exports, the acclaimed growth driver, suffer.
The only true consistency we have demonstrated has been a total reliance on borrowed wisdom.
In the 1990s, when we were pushed to adopt so-called “economic reforms,” Pakistan’s per capita income was significantly higher than that of all regional peers, including India, Bangladesh, China, and Vietnam. Yet we were told our economy was underperforming and required deep structural overhauls dictated by the prescriptions of international donors.
