The economy of waiting

Sometimes Pakistan loses an opportunity not by saying no, but by taking too long to say yes.

What does an economy lose when people, businesses and investors spend their productive lives waiting? Waiting for approvals, payments and adequate infrastructure waiting for policy clarity. Justice, a job, a connection, a decision—or simply for a road to open. We rarely put a value on that time. Perhaps we should, because waiting is not neutral. It is an economic cost.

Consider a Chinese investor who sought to establish a donkey-meat and hides export business in Pakistan. The investment journey reportedly involved around 28 approvals and certifications and took more than five years before exports could begin.

Five years is not merely an administrative statistic. During that time, capital could have been deployed, workers employed, suppliers developed and exports generated. The project eventually moved forward. But the time did not come back.

And this is where the economics of waiting begins.

The Investor waits

Pakistan’s investment policies increasingly speak the language of facilitation: simplified procedures, fewer approvals, one-window operations and ease of doing business. But there can be a wide distance between policy on paper and experience on the ground.

Removing an approval from a policy document does not necessarily remove the waiting from an investor’s journey.

An investor may still navigate different agencies, certifications, land issues, utilities, taxation, environmental requirements and repeated clarifications.

For capital, uncertainty is costly. For an investor, a delayed decision can be more damaging than an unfavourable one. A clear “no” allows capital to move. Indefinite waiting keeps it suspended.

The citizen waits

But this is not only an investor’s problem.

Look at a road under construction, an unfinished underpass or a major infrastructure project whose completion keeps moving forward on the calendar.

One delay can create thousands of smaller delays every day.

Cars crawl through diversions. Buses arrive late. Goods take longer to reach markets. Workers lose productive hours. Fuel is burned while vehicles stand still.

And fuel is not a trivial cost for Pakistan. We import much of what we consume.

So when thousands of vehicles idle in traffic, we are not merely wasting motorists’ time. We are consuming an imported resource to produce nothing.

A rainy day makes the economics even harsher.

A bottleneck becomes a queue. A queue becomes hours. Hours become lost work, delayed deliveries, wasted fuel and sometimes missed medical care.

What appears to be “traffic inconvenience” is therefore also lost national productivity.

The country waits

Perhaps the most glaring example is ML-1.

Pakistan’s main railway artery has been waiting for transformation for years.

The project to upgrade and modernise the 1,733-kilometre Karachi–Peshawar railway corridor has been discussed, planned, negotiated and redesigned through successive phases. Yet its full-scale execution remains elusive.

ML-1 is not simply another infrastructure project. Railways carry people and freight. A faster, safer and more reliable railway can reduce logistics costs, improve connectivity and support trade.

Every year of delay therefore carries an opportunity cost. While we wait for the railway to be modernised, trucks continue to carry freight on roads, passengers endure slower journeys and the economy bears higher logistics costs.

An infrastructure project can be delayed on paper. Its economic cost is paid every day.

The litigant waits

Then there is perhaps the most consequential form of waiting: waiting for justice. A commercial dispute that takes years to resolve does not remain confined to a courtroom.

Money remains tied up. Property may remain under dispute. Businesses cannot confidently plan. Creditors cannot recover funds. Entrepreneurs cannot redeploy capital.

Justice delayed is therefore also an economic concern.

A functioning economy depends not only on contracts being signed, but on rights being enforceable within a reasonable time.

When courts are overcrowded and cases remain pending for years, uncertainty becomes embedded in commercial life.

Capital dislikes uncertainty.

Business dislikes unpredictability.

And both dislike waiting.

The business waits for its own money

The same principle applies to government payments, tax refunds, utility connections, licences, customs clearances and other routine transactions.

A contractor waiting for payment may delay payments to suppliers. A company waiting for a refund has working capital locked away.

One delayed payment can therefore travel through an entire supply chain.

The real cost is distributed across everyone waiting downstream.

The economy of waiting

We have sophisticated ways of measuring investment, exports, tax revenue and GDP.

But another economy rarely appears in national accounts: the economy of waiting.

Hours lost in traffic. Days lost to approvals. Months lost to payments. Years lost to infrastructure and justice.

Individually, each delay may appear manageable.

Collectively, they become a productivity problem.

A worker who loses hours in traffic, a business waiting months for a decision, or an investor waiting years is not merely losing time.

The economy is losing productive capacity.

The problem is not regulation. It is uncertainty about time.

A modern state needs regulation. Environmental safeguards matter. Safety standards matter. Tax compliance matters. Land titles need verification. Financial systems need oversight.

The answer is therefore not to remove every rule.

It is to make the rules predictable.

Every legitimate administrative process should have a clear requirement, a responsible authority and a defined time limit.

If additional time is genuinely necessary, the reason should be transparent.

The citizen or investor should not have to become the coordinator of the state. Government should coordinate government.

Performance should be measured not merely by applications received or meetings held, but by how quickly decisions are made.

Putting a value on time

Pakistan has spent decades looking for more capital, investment, exports and productivity. All are necessary.

But alongside these goals, we need to recognise another economic resource: time.

Other countries have shown that administrative time can be reduced through simpler procedures, digital systems, integrated approvals and clear deadlines.

The lesson is not that Pakistan needs fewer institutions.

It needs institutions that understand the value of time.

Time cannot be imported, borrowed or recovered. Once an opportunity has passed, or a productive day has been lost, the economic value is gone.

Perhaps, therefore, one of Pakistan’s most important economic reforms is also one of its simplest: stop making productive people wait.

Because a country does not become productive merely because its people work hard.

It becomes productive when its institutions stop consuming the time of those who do.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026