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Pakistan Cut Public Debt in Half On Musharraf's Watch in 1999-2008

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Contrary to what Musharraf bashers dismiss as "aid-fueled " or "consumption-driven" economy in 2002-2007, the economic growth was actually driven by private savings and investments. Private domestic savings rate was over 18% of GDP in Musharraf but has slumped to just 7% in recent years. Pakistan attracted record foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom, banking, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. Annual FDI flow into Pakistan reached $5.4 billion in Year 2007-08. As to US aid during and after Musharraf's years in office, it has actually tripled in size from $700 million in 2007-8 to $2.1 billion since 2010. If aid alone were responsible for economic growth, then the GDP growth rate should have accelerated, not plummeted, after Musharraf left office.






In addition to the economic revival, Musharraf focused on social sector as well. Pakistan's HDI grew an average rate of 2.7% per year under President Musharraf from 2000 to 2007, and then its pace slowed to 0.7% per year in 2008 to 2012 under elected politicians, according to the 2013 Human Development Report titled ā€œThe Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse Worldā€.




Overall, Pakistan's human development score rose by 18.9% during Musharraf years and increased just 3.4% under elected leadership since 2008. The news on the human development front got even worse in the last three years, with HDI growth slowing down as low as 0.59% ā€” a paltry average annual increase of under 0.20 per cent.



Going further back to the decade of 1990s when the civilian leadership of the country alternated between PML (N) and PPP, the increase in Pakistan's HDI was 9.3% from 1990 to 2000, less than half of the HDI gain of 18.9% on Musharraf's watch from 2000 to 2007.


Lets hold our horses. What FDI are we talking about? Was it banking FDI, was it Dams or electrical - what FDI came in? Was CSF Funds being counted as FDI. Where did that investment go? In the military coffers? I would not jump to a conclusion on this. A few massive sales in Telecom through spectrum selling does not make for some structural improvements for FDI. I think Musharraf's era saw massive public enterprise selling, saw spectrum selling, and saw some Expat capital flowing back in. Those of us living in PK during those years know fully well where the "goodness" came from. It was a credit driven binge (we almost killed the Balance Sheets of our banking industry - when defaults began to happen). Every tom, dick and harry was getting credit cards and mortgages. Household goods like fridges, acs, tv etc, drove consumerism which to-date we are having to deal with. There was no material expansion of manufacturing minus the major export oriented textile industries getting cheap capital. Local manufacturing expanded given loose credit (in terms of motorcycles, cars etc). Yes those were the good old days, but we were setting ourselves by creating an artificial credit bubble, which eventually would have burst into what we have today. The PPP government that followed did pure and simple looting of everything they could find, and then we got caught into the Terror cycle which killed economic activity. NS gov was more or less of the same, slightly better, but still dealing with terror. They however rang massive deficits through borrowing, and were uninterested in balance of payments, while keeping the rupee/dollar parity, thereby creating as semblance of economic normalcy. However behind the scenes the the dollar/rupee stability, was causing huge impacts for the export industry, as inputs cost could not be rationalized with export pricing. They also allowed for free import structures, to allow for lavish expenditures and luxury goods. I might be wrong on the above but having lived through these years, the above is how I read it.
 
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Lets hold our horses. What FDI are we talking about? Was it banking FDI, was it Dams or electrical - what FDI came in? Was CSF Funds being counted as FDI. Where did that investment go? In the military coffers? I would not jump to a conclusion on this. A few massive sales in Telecom through spectrum selling does not make for some structural improvements for FDI. I think Musharraf's era saw massive public enterprise selling, saw spectrum selling, and saw some Expat capital flowing back in. Those of us living in PK during those years know fully well where the "goodness" came from. It was a credit driven binge (we almost killed the Balance Sheets of our banking industry - when defaults began to happen). Every tom, dick and harry was getting credit cards and mortgages. Household goods like fridges, acs, tv etc. There was no material expansion of manufacturing minus the major export oriented textile industries getting cheap capital. Local manufacturing expanded given loose credit (in terms of motorcycles, cars etc). Yes those were the good old days, but we were setting ourselves by creating an artificial credit bubble, which eventually would have burst into what we have today. The PPP government that followed did pure and simple looting of everything they could find, and then we got caught into the Terror cycle which killed economic activity. NS gov was more or less of the same, slightly better, but still dealing with terror. They however rang massive deficits through borrowing, and were uninterested in balance of payments, while keeping the rupee/dollar parity, thereby creating as semblance of economic normalcy. However behind the scenes the the dollar/rupee stability, was causing huge impacts for the export industry, as inputs cost could not be rationalized with export pricing. They also allowed for free import structures, to allow for lavish expenditures and luxury goods. I might be wrong on the above but having lived through these years, the above is how I read it.
100%.
 
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I feel sorry for those people here who actually believe pti will get a second term.šŸ˜‚ so detached from reality they are.
 
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Lets hold our horses. What FDI are we talking about? Was it banking FDI, was it Dams or electrical - what FDI came in? Was CSF Funds being counted as FDI. Where did that investment go? In the military coffers? I would not jump to a conclusion on this. A few massive sales in Telecom through spectrum selling does not make for some structural improvements for FDI. I think Musharraf's era saw massive public enterprise selling, saw spectrum selling, and saw some Expat capital flowing back in. Those of us living in PK during those years know fully well where the "goodness" came from. It was a credit driven binge (we almost killed the Balance Sheets of our banking industry - when defaults began to happen). Every tom, dick and harry was getting credit cards and mortgages. Household goods like fridges, acs, tv etc, drove consumerism which to-date we are having to deal with. There was no material expansion of manufacturing minus the major export oriented textile industries getting cheap capital. Local manufacturing expanded given loose credit (in terms of motorcycles, cars etc). Yes those were the good old days, but we were setting ourselves by creating an artificial credit bubble, which eventually would have burst into what we have today. The PPP government that followed did pure and simple looting of everything they could find, and then we got caught into the Terror cycle which killed economic activity. NS gov was more or less of the same, slightly better, but still dealing with terror. They however rang massive deficits through borrowing, and were uninterested in balance of payments, while keeping the rupee/dollar parity, thereby creating as semblance of economic normalcy. However behind the scenes the the dollar/rupee stability, was causing huge impacts for the export industry, as inputs cost could not be rationalized with export pricing. They also allowed for free import structures, to allow for lavish expenditures and luxury goods. I might be wrong on the above but having lived through these years, the above is how I read it.

FDI came in a lot of sectors, ranging from telecommunications to manufacturing.

Several mobile phone service operators built networks worth billions of dollars,, new cement plants met growing demand that doubled per capita cement consumption, FMCG sector took off to meet demand from growing middle class, car and motorcycle production jumped several fold


Internet-India-Pak.jpg



Cement+Charts+Total.jpg




auto-volume-2007-08.jpg


Textile exports more than doubled



Pakistan%2BTextile%2BExports%2BGrowth.png


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The government has identified telecoms as a key sector for attracting overseas investment. Mobilink, owned by Egyptā€™s Orascom, has uncovered a vast pool of mobile phone users, with the number of customers soaring from one million to 3.7 million in the past 18 months.

ā€œWe will have invested $775m in Pakistan by the end of the year and we now control 64% of the market,ā€ says Mobilinkā€™s chairman Zouhair Khaliq. ā€œWe are now in the process of raising $200m from export agencies to help fund our $400m investment programme for next year. Our network now covers 350 towns across the country, some without running water or metalled roads.ā€

This is one business sector in which foreign operators have been piling into the market. Norwayā€™s Telenor and UAE-owned Warid Telecom were recently awarded GSM licences and two Luxembourg-based groups, Instafone and Paktel, are competing along with state-owned Ufone, which holds a 25% market share.


 
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FDI came in a lot of sectors, ranging from telecommunications to manufacturing.

Several mobile phone service operators built networks worth billions of dollars,, new cement plants met growing demand that doubled per capita cement consumption, FMCG sector took off to meet demand from growing middle class, car and motorcycle production jumped several fold


Internet-India-Pak.jpg



Cement+Charts+Total.jpg




auto-volume-2007-08.jpg


Textile exports more than doubled



Pakistan%2BTextile%2BExports%2BGrowth.png


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The government has identified telecoms as a key sector for attracting overseas investment. Mobilink, owned by Egyptā€™s Orascom, has uncovered a vast pool of mobile phone users, with the number of customers soaring from one million to 3.7 million in the past 18 months.

ā€œWe will have invested $775m in Pakistan by the end of the year and we now control 64% of the market,ā€ says Mobilinkā€™s chairman Zouhair Khaliq. ā€œWe are now in the process of raising $200m from export agencies to help fund our $400m investment programme for next year. Our network now covers 350 towns across the country, some without running water or metalled roads.ā€

This is one business sector in which foreign operators have been piling into the market. Norwayā€™s Telenor and UAE-owned Warid Telecom were recently awarded GSM licences and two Luxembourg-based groups, Instafone and Paktel, are competing along with state-owned Ufone, which holds a 25% market share.


I am sorry to go back and forth on this. The foreign investment in telco and wireless brought FDI. But do you realize how much money goes out from those very entities. Each of these investors as do FMCGs build into their investments guarantees that they are allowed to expatriate profits to their parent countries. I am sure you know of that. So whenever there is investment we must see what the material impact is. I agree deregulation of telco helped drive internet penetration. That was a good thing, but that did bring with it expatriation of foreign exchange. The way to limit that is to make capital easy for local investors. That is where our banking groups suck. They have historically been slush funds for the political class. Instead these banks should have provided capital to local conglomerates under rates that make sense. Lack of that limits our ability to grow locally.

Imagine if our banks who BTW are cash flush had invested in the purchase of our spectrum and companies like PTCL and KE. Imagine the benefit to our country not to mention the security alignment.

Again not sure why we are arguing something that is well established. Musharraf era growth was a consumption driven growth.
 
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I am sorry to go back and forth on this. The foreign investment in telco and wireless brought FDI. But do you realize how much money goes out from those very entities. Each of these investors as do FMCGs build into their investments guarantees that they are allowed to expatriate profits to their parent countries. I am sure you know of that. So whenever there is investment we must see what the material impact is. I agree deregulation of telco helped drive internet penetration. That was a good thing, but that did bring with it expatriation of foreign exchange. The way to limit that is to make capital easy for local investors. That is where our banking groups suck. They have historically been slush funds for the political class. Instead these banks should have provided capital to local conglomerates under rates that make sense. Lack of that limits our ability to grow locally.

Imagine if our banks who BTW are cash flush had invested in the purchase of our spectrum and companies like PTCL and KE. Imagine the benefit to our country not to mention the security alignment.

Again not sure why we are arguing something that is well established. Musharraf era growth was a consumption driven growth.

There would be no FDI anywhere in the world without the right to repatriate profits.

Overall, FDI is a good thing, especially in a country like Pakistan where savings and investments rates are very low.

FDI helps build necessary infrastructure. Without the telecom infrastructure, there would be no tech industry, no freelancers and no tech exports in Pakistan.

With expanding Internet infrastructure and rapidly growing user base, Pakistan is now seeing robust growth in venture money pouring into technology startups. Pakistani startups have already attracted more than $278 million in funding in 2021, more funds than all the money raised by Pakistani startups in their entire history. A recent example is Kleiner Perkins, a top Silicon Valley venture capital investment firm, that led a series A round of $17 million investment into Pakistani start-up Tajir. The startup operates an online marketplace for small store merchants in Pakistan. The announcement came via a tweet by Mamoon Hamid, a Pakistani-American Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the investment. Last year, Tajir raised a $1.8 million seed round. The company's revenue has increased by 10x since its seed round.

Pakistan Technology Exports Trend 2007-2021. Source: Arif Habib

Pakistan's technology exports are experiencing rapid growth in double digits over the last decade. Total technology exports jumped 47% to $2.1 billion in fiscal year 2020-21.



The foundation for Pakistan's digital transformation was laid with the higher education reform and telecommunications deregulation and investments starting in the year 2001 on President Musharraf's watch. With a huge increase in higher education funding, Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr. Ata ur Rehman succeeded in establishing 51 new universities during 2002-2008. As a result, university enrollment (which had reached only 275,000 from 1947 to 2003) soared to about 800,000 in 2008. This helped build a significant human capital that drove the IT revolution in Pakistan.

Please watch the following video presentation for more details on Pakistan's technology startup ecosystem:


 
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Good thing we don't live in a democracy right? Or else Imran khan wouldn't be elected again
My dear, it seems your as deluded as the PM. If it were a democracy Imran Khan wouldā€™ve been out of office by now. 90% of The people of Pakistan who voted for him actually hate him today. Thatā€™s the ground reality.
 
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I feel sorry for those people here who actually believe pti will get a second term.šŸ˜‚ so detached from reality they are.
The overseas community if Pakistanis are overwhelmingly pro Imran. Many opinion makers of this message board is made up of the overseas population.

I wonder about the impact of allowing them to vote in the coming election. Shrewd tactical move by Imran!
 
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Contrary to what Musharraf bashers dismiss as "aid-fueled " or "consumption-driven" economy in 2002-2007, the economic growth was actually driven by private savings and investments. Private domestic savings rate was over 18% of GDP in Musharraf but has slumped to just 7% in recent years. Pakistan attracted record foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom, banking, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. Annual FDI flow into Pakistan reached $5.4 billion in Year 2007-08. As to US aid during and after Musharraf's years in office, it has actually tripled in size from $700 million in 2007-8 to $2.1 billion since 2010. If aid alone were responsible for economic growth, then the GDP growth rate should have accelerated, not plummeted, after Musharraf left office.

Riaz Sahib,
You could share all the facts and numbers but some people would never accept them. Those who blame Imran Khan's economy on the previous decade-old rules of PPP and PMLN (2008-2018) would never accept that the same PPP and PMLN had in a previous decade (1988-1999) ruined Pakistan's economy. Some cognitive dissonance!?

For what it is worth, Musharraf came the farthest in achieving a good compromise between India and Pakistan that neither side would have been happy with. His legacy (as President of Pakistan) will be remembered for that :cheers:
Yes. A golden opportunity was missed to have a workable peace with India. By 2008, the 'Judges Movement' in Pakistan, the Lal Masjid spawned violence, and indeed TTP originated terrorism in Pakistan had made Musharraf as 'the Bunker President'. He was physically attacked by, among others, some Kashmir factions for making compromises with India over Kashmir. He HAD to leave power in 2008, giving it to some form of civilian rule, and PPP was the only choice available. Pakistan has never tolerated its dictators for more than 10 odd years!
 
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