The PTI has promised to achieve within the first 100 days of its rule a number of crucially important goals. That is, if it were to win the forthcoming elections and succeeded as well in forming the government at the centre.
While it is normal for political parties to make tall promises on the eve of general elections with no intention of keeping them and invariably without an iota of understanding what it would take to implement these promised programmes, still one would not like to dismiss the PTI's first '100-day' programme as such--tall claims.
And on the face of it the brief details of the PTI's five-year programme that it intends to implement when in power as announced by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Asad Umar, Jahangir Tareen, Pervez Khattak and Shireen Mazari appear just what Pakistan needs at this point in its socio-economic history.
Of course, as they say the devil is always left in the details which in turn is recorded as always in ineligible 'fine print'. And five years is too long a period for the voters to remember what the party in power had promised at the time it came asking for the vote.
But 100 days? That is too short a period for even the normally forgetful voters not to remember what was promised and make the PTI, if at all it was in the saddle, accountable at the end of the period in question. In fact the broadcast media would replay ad nauseam the video clips of the PTI event of Sunday the May 20th 2018 along with the list of what was achieved in the first 100 days and what could not be. So much for the 100-day programme.
However, going by the kind of financial and other resources available to Pakistan and the massive back-log accumulated over the years in our social, political and economic sectors, five years would be too short a period for even the most efficient government to make any visible difference.
Many countries have taken a number of life times to reach the top 50 in the world socio-economic ranking. But some countries, like the 'Asian tigers' and China have accomplished miracles in a matter of couple of decades. But except China most industrialised countries including many emerging economies are currently experiencing what is called de-industrialisation.
Of course, drawing inspiration from the successful models without taking into consideration our own comparative advantages and disadvantages must, however, be guarded against.
We are an agrarian economy with a formidable youth bulge. The depleting irrigation water, therefore, needs to be used as efficiently as possible for cash crops such as cotton and not for sugarcane the end product of which - sugar - sells at prices many times more than the price if the item were to be imported.
And the youth bulge needs to be turned into a formidable economic unit by providing it the required education and skills at affordable cost to the recipients and within the shortest possible period.
It is at the education level that the element of inequality sets in. A child with no education or the one educated at the intellectually poorly endowed government schools would never be able to catch up with the one educated at the costly Beaconhouse, Headstart or Roots. The handfuls that get their education at such schools normally do not stay back in the country for obvious reasons leaving the other kind to manage the country which they do most inefficiently for obvious reasons.
It is because of this reason that the best of our socio-economic plans have consistently failed to yield the desired results as those that are supposed to implement these policies simply lack the knowledge and skill required to perform the tasks assigned to them with any degree of efficiency and honesty.
So, what we need is a wholesome agricultural policy aimed at developing as fast as one could an essentially agro-based manufacturing sector on the one hand and a properly educated and skilled youth population on the other using crash courses.
Meanwhile, let us also look at how some of the countries have transformed themselves from being the have-nots to the haves category in a matter of few years. One such country that we should look rather closely is Vietnam.
Some basic foundations are clearly important in the case of Vietnam state, as pointed out in one of the Brookings blogs (Vietnam's manufacturing miracle: lessons for developing countries, dated April 17, 2018).
The authors of the blog know what they are talking about: Sebastain Eckardt (Lead Economist for Vietnam - The World Bank), Deepak Mishra (Manager - Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice, the World Bank Co-director - World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends) and Viet Tuan Dinh (Senior Economist - Hanoi Office, The World Bank).
Worldwide, one in 10 smartphones is produced in Vietnam. Mobile phones are Vietnam's number one export, generating export revenues of more than $45 billion in 2017.
This success is a symptom of a broader trend that defies global norms. While global trade has stagnated, Vietnam's trade has soared to 190 percent of GDP in 2017 from 70 percent in 2007. While premature de-industrialization sweeps through the world economy, Vietnam's manufacturing sector has steadily expanded, adding an estimated 1.5 million new manufacturing jobs between 2014 and 2016 alone.
Why is manufacturing witnessing a renaissance in Vietnam, while relapsing in many parts of the world? Given the recent clarion call by several world leaders to create manufacturing jobs in their countries, Vietnam's experience holds lessons for developing and advanced economies alike.
Wages are said to be still low and demographics are favorable. About half the population is below the age of 35, and Vietnam has a large and growing workforce. The country is also politically stable and geographically close to major global supply chains. But this is not necessarily what sets Vietnam apart. Instead, the authors argue that Vietnam managed to capitalize on its strong foundations through good policies.
Vietnam is said to have achieved its success the hard way. First, it has embraced trade liberalization with gusto. Second, it has complemented external liberalization with domestic reforms and lowering the cost of doing business. Finally, Vietnam has invested heavily in human and physical capital, predominantly through public investments.
These lessons-global integration, domestic liberalization, and investing in people and infrastructure-while not new, need reiteration in the wake of rising economic nationalism and anti-globalization sentiments.
First, trade policy has arguably been the most important industrial policy for Vietnam. With Singapore, it shares the top spot in East Asia of being a member for bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements.
A signatory to 16 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, member of ASEAN, and has concluded bilateral agreements with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, the EU, and the Eurasian Customs Union. Earlier this year, it became one of 11 countries to join the revived the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
These trade agreements dramatically reduced tariffs, anchored difficult domestic reforms, and opened much of the economy to foreign investment. It is estimated that more than 10,000 foreign companies-including major global players such as Samsung, Intel, and LG-operate in Vietnam today, mostly in export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing.
Second, Vietnam has leveraged its demographic dividend through effective investment in its people. Vietnam's efforts to promote access to primary education and to ensure its quality through minimum quality standards have paid off.
In the latest 2015 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - which tests high school students in maths, science, and other disciplines-Vietnam ranked 8th out of 72 participating countries, ahead of OECD countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.
Third, it relentlessly focuses on competitiveness and the ease of doing business. Vietnam has made steady progress in improving its investment climate, as evidenced by higher scores in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index (up five points to 55th in the world), and the 2018 World Bank's ease of doing business ranking (68th in the world, up 31 places since 2014). Vietnam also reduced the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent from 32 percent in 2003.
Finally, Vietnam invested in infrastructure, especially in the power sector and connectivity. Thanks in part to high public investment, power generation, transmission, and distribution capacity have been scaled up to meet rapidly rising demand.
To keep pace with rapidly growing container trade (which expanded at a staggering average annual rate of 12.4 percent between 2008 and 2016), Vietnam also developed its connective infrastructure, including seaports and marine terminals.
Overall, Vietnam's manufacturing sector remains relatively small. Most of the sector is driven by foreign direct investment (FDI), which accounts for close to 90 percent of manufacturing exports. Many of the newly created jobs in manufacturing are in basic assembly which requires manual labour but does not necessarily add a lot of value (per worker).