What I miserably fail to understand, from the posts in this thread, is why so many here advocate for a free market economy conversion system, what are the benefits of such a system when I can list many major disadvantages starting with loan repayments and so on. Today, Pakistan is on average 60%-100% more expensive that it was in 2017/18 and the single biggest responsibility lies on the exchange rate which is NOT in our favour at all; our external debt today is over 17000 Billion Rupees whereas the same external debt could have been 12,000 Billion Rupees if only the USD was at 110.
Further, it is good to give credit where it is due when blame is awarded the same way; Karachi saw progress during Musharraf regime and people place all praises at the feet of Mustafa Kamal but when they want to blame something, they blame Altaf Hussain. This cherry picking is neither fair nor correct. Similarly, CPEC project was born during Musharraf regime, PPP worked on it and most of it got implemented under PML, perhaps all because of the Military & Chinese interests. We started facing power shortages under Musharraf, by the time PPP handed over power to PML we were in a dire situation and PPP's short sighted, corrupt and kickback minting schemes of IPP's such as the Turkish Power Plants on Ship etc., cost us an arm and a leg but failed to produce electricity. PML invested heavily in electricity generation, be it because of pressure of the Army or Chinese or whatever, today all the surplus electricity that we have is because of the projects that were initiated by the PML Government.
In my opinion, going forward we should offer free land and tax free period of 25-50 years to multi-nationals who invest USD 10 Billion or more in Pakistan in the next 5 years. The FDI they bring in along with thousands of jobs, cheaper locally manufactured goods along with ability to export would be the foundation that we need to be where we want to be in 15-20 years. And we can continue to build on that.