LOVE to see my predictions from years ago coming true. People, including the Pakistani population on here, used to argue with me in terms of Pakistan is in a ditch and will never get out. Here are the results of democracy and a system in place, for mere few years.
In the next ten years, Pakistan will be a head-on competition to Indian labor market, whether be it IT, Bio-Research, Pharmaceuticals or Avoinics. The ONLY thing Pakistan needs to do, is to STAY ON TRACK. Stable political system, NO terrorism, safer environment and military away from Islamabad, protecting borders.
The rest would workout naturally. The base of growth has been put in and from this point on, its going to be natural as long as the few things I mentioned above, will happen in terms of running a stable political system, peace, removal of extremist fractions from the society, etc.
The sales tax on mobile phones won't impact anything. In fact, Punjab's core focus in producing a technical labor force, is on Mobile technologies. There is Huawei and a couple of other organizations putting in local plants to manufacture tablets, laptops and mobile devices for the Pakistani market. So once that starts, the tax will be higher on imported cell phones and reduced on internally built devices to promote made in Pakistan technologies. So this increase in sales tax is the beginning of a strategy to produce entirely made in Pakistan tech. Anywhere in the world, imported stuff has a lot of taxes.
The Mercedes S class we buy in the US for $ 120,000.00, cost this much due to it being an imported car, otherwise, in Europe, it costs 40% below so imagine how much tax is added on imported items, which is how it should be.
You are focused on wrong comparisons. Pakistan and India are not the same size or the population, so they can't be compared. Pakistan will be experiencing her OWN growth for her population and size. Which, if done correctly, over the next 10-15 years, should take it around or above Australia's economy easily or in the top 15. The fact is, Pakistan's economy hitting 2-3 trillion will STILL give it such a massive boost that for its size and population, she'd have more to offer to its population than India can, simply because to feed, cloth and educate a family of 4 takes less money than a family of 12 people. Its as simple as that.
Plus, Pakistan's 60% young labor male population will become a challenge for many labor markets out there today, including India. Imagine just 5-10 million Pakistanis working on higher paying Technology, Medicine or Research jobs across the globe and inside Pakistan as BPO, over the next 10-20 years (similar to how Indian started in 1995's)...where would this country be? It'd be around of above Australia's economy. No doubt about it.