Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal rightly noted that Pakistan’s economic stability depended on export-led growth – alongside tax reforms and foreign direct investment – yet such recognition alone won’t be enough to yield tangible results.
Addressing the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Karachi, he urged the public and private sectors to rally behind the Uraan Pakistan programme’s highly ambitious $100 billion export target, slated to be achieved over the next seven to eight years, while describing the present situation – exports stuck at roughly $32 billion – as nothing short of an “export emergency”.
It goes without saying that for a country of Pakistan’s population size and geostrategic location, continued drift in cycles of debt and dependence is no longer tenable. While the minister identified sectors ranging from agriculture and manufacturing to IT and mining, among others, as central to export growth, the real question is whether our economic managers can create the enabling environment for these and other sectors to compete globally.
In this context, it is essential to completely recalibrate Pakistan’s export outlook, which still largely revolves around selling whatever surplus happens to be produced domestically. A country aspiring to break into the league of serious exporters must also start producing with the explicit objective of serving international markets.
This means not only upgrading the quality of processes and products to meet global standards, but also investing in research to understand shifting trends in foreign demand, consumer preferences and regulatory requirements. Without this, Pakistan risks continuing to push traditional, low-value exports into saturated markets rather than carving out new niches in higher-value segments.
Achieving international competitiveness will also require investments in branding, innovation, technology adoption and supply-chain reliability – all areas where regional economies like Vietnam and Thailand outstripped us long ago, turning themselves into export powerhouses while Pakistan remained trapped in a low-value, low-growth cycle.
We must also take a leaf out of China’s playbook. Recent decades have seen China transform itself into the world’s manufacturing hub by becoming internationally competitive over a range of aspects – cost, quality, scale, technology and reliability. Another key contributor to that success was a deliberate strategy of investing heavily in the industrial base of its coastal regions, which not only spurred industrial clustering but also brought down shipping and logistics costs, giving Chinese exports a decisive edge in global markets.
Pakistan, by contrast, has yet to pursue such targeted strategies to carve out competitive advantage. Our industries already operate under some of the highest cost structures in the region, with exorbitant energy tariffs crippling competitiveness. While reforming the energy sector is essential, another long-neglected step would be to develop an integrated industrial belt along our coastal regions.
Yet here we face formidable obstacles. In Karachi, for instance, pervasive land grabs have distorted the market for industrial plots. Land that ought to be made available for industry at fair market value, passes through secondary sales at inflated prices, generating windfall profits for middlemen while pushing up costs for industry.
Unless this predatory cycle is broken and land along the coast is systematically earmarked for industrial use, Pakistan will fail to unlock the advantages geography has granted it. Eking out every possible competitive edge – whether through logistics, energy pricing or land policy – is the only way Pakistan can begin to close the yawning gap with regional economies that left us behind a long time ago.
The global headwinds unleashed by the Trump Administration’s protectionist policies has made it even more essential for Pakistan to start building an enabling environment to make its export base internationally competitive and truly world class. Without it, the $100 billion dream will remain little more than a slogan.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025