Pakistan’s misguided obsession with infrastructure

[Indus Pakistan]

Walt Disney was mostly politically motivated. They towed their government's line and accused Pakistan of all sorts.

There is no such thing as free lunch in this world. The claim about 'free trade' is just a big lie. Most business is directed and influenced by government policy. They say America is bastion of free trade - well check out how much trade they do with Iran?

The fact is and we have to recognize this - global trade is dominated by USA and her surrogates. If you look at the the major countries that have gone from 3rd top 1st world you will struggle to even find one that has not been a 'fvck buddy' of USA. Take South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and even Malaysia all had Uncle Sam smiling at them. Singapore despite being majority ethnic Chinese licks up to USA like baby suckles her mother.

Pakistan has to learn to play the international order instead of acting a like jihadi state in opposition to the Western order. Hell even Chinese are more relaxed about the American's then Pakistan is and they indeed pose a real threat to them.

 

[Kabira]

Good point. I think the motorway idea is great and should be extended across the entire country vigouresly but I do think the M2 was messed up. The route they followed was wrong. It should have followed the same alignment as GT road but 5-10 miles south. At every 20 miles links roads should have been built to connect it with GT road node points.

After Sialkot-Lahore motorway is build then maybe they will make Sialkot-Islamabad motorway later on which will cover Gujrat, Jhelum and Pindi and load on GT road will be reduced.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

I tell you guy's even governance does not have to be great. Bangladesh is hardly rip roaring citadel of efficient government but everytime I go to any UK store all I see is 'Made in Bangla' clothes. They don't even have any cotton so how the hell did all the garment manufacturing end up in that country that is barely above water.

The reason is mention 'Pakistan' anywhere on earth including China our so called friend and people are like 'oh Pakistan be careful'. It is that perception as a country of hostile people with runaway religious zealots brimming with hatred for the West that has destroyed Pakistan's trading potential. People do not like going to Pakistan. This is fact.

 

[VCheng]

It is that perception as a country of hostile people with runaway religious zealots brimming with hatred for the West that has destroyed Pakistan's trading potential.

Is that mere perception or indeed the reality of today's Pakistan?

 

[Indus Pakistan]

Is that mere perception or indeed the reality of today's Pakistan?

I would say there is indeed reality but that has also been amplified by certain lobby groups - namely our Ganga friends and our vociferous hatred for Israel has acted as lubricant in that process. So to quantify it it was like 5 units of reality that has been multiplied by 5 and the result is 25.

I am not the sort of person to place blame outside. Failure begins at home and only the retarded look outside to find refuge for failure. The primarly fault is Pakistan. This country has gift for shooting itself in it's own testicles and in the most public manner possible. The greatest example of this was when that unwanted A-rab, who no country on earth wanted to have anything to wo with including his own homeland, Saudia Arabia or othe other Arab countries was found in Pakistan. That was the greatest minus public relations disaster any country on earth could have faced. Pakistan of course was the place where he was found notwithstanding the childish claims that still claim to the contrary.

This disaster would be equivalent to the biggest whore in UK being found hiding in my bedroom. I don't think I could ever recover from such a negative publicity. Crap sticks. I could make any number of defences like I did not know or blah blah but the damage to my reputation would be done.

 

[khansaheeb]

The key to a vibrant economy is production, not infrastructure. Producing goods of increasing value and sophistication is what moves an economy.

The emphasis on infrastructure has been a mistake.

yes, Its all about circulation of money. Workers get get wages for the work they do in the projects and spend it in goods and services.

 

[jamal18]

yes, Its all about circulation of money. Workers get get wages for the work they do in the projects and spend it in goods and services.

Absolutely. Give people wages, and industry profit. This money is then recycled.

Domestic demand must be met from domestic production, not by imports. Establishing foreign industry at home deprives development of domestically owned industry.

All the major economic success stories have followed this path: Japan, Korean. Taiwan etc.

 

[Kabira]

Muzaffarabad-Islamabad motorway is in planning stages. And also Muzafarrabad-Mirpur express way. After Peshawar-Kabul motorway it will take 2.5 hours to reach there instead of around 5 now.

 

[Thorough Pro]

Writer is definitely a biased ignorant individual.

The government is building more airports, roads and railways, even though the existing ones are underused.

NEARLY 20 years after it opened, Pakistan’s first motorway still has a desolate feel. There is scant traffic along the 375km link between Islamabad and Lahore (pictured). Motorists can drive for miles without seeing another vehicle, save perhaps for traffic cops manning speed traps. As the two cities are already connected by the Grand Trunk Road, which is 90km shorter and toll-free, there is simply not much demand for a motorway.

Yet this $1.2bn white elephant is one of the proudest achievements of Nawaz Sharif, who was prime minister when it opened in 1997 and is once again running Pakistan. Mr Sharif, who enjoys comparisons to Sher Shah Suri, a 16th-century ruler who renovated the Grand Trunk Road, never tires of talking about it. He regained power in 2013 with a campaign which both harked back to his famous road and promised more infrastructure to come. He even pledged bullet trains that would enable pious passengers to leave Karachi after dawn prayers and arrive in Peshawar, more than 1,000km to the north, in time for evening worship.
It is an article of faith for Mr Sharif and his party, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), that investment in infrastructure is a foolproof way of boosting the economy. His government is racing to finish umpteen projects before the next election, due by mid-2018, including a metro line in Lahore and a new airport for Islamabad. The likelihood is that the new airport (which has been plagued with problems, including runways that have been built too close together) will be as underused as most of the country’s other airports, many of which are modern and spacious.

Pakistan’s infrastructure is underused because the economic boom it was meant to trigger has never arrived. Over the past three years the government has successfully staved off a balance-of-payments crisis, achieving some measure of macroeconomic stability. It has trimmed the budget deficit, partly by broadening the tax take and partly by cutting energy subsidies. That, along with lower oil prices, has narrowed Pakistan’s trade deficit and allowed it to begin rebuilding its foreign-exchange reserves. The stockmarket has risen by 50% since the end of 2015.

But terrorism and insurgency have put off investors, both
foreign and domestic. The country is also held back by inefficient and often cartelised industries, which have fallen behind rivals in India and Bangladesh. Exports, 60% of which are textiles, have been shrinking for years. Much more needs to be done to create an educated workforce. Almost half of all those aged five to 16 are out of school—25m children. Health, like education, is woefully underfunded, in part because successive governments shy away from taxing the wealthy. Only 0.6% of the population pays income tax. As the World Bank puts it, Pakistan’s long-term development depends on “better nutrition, health and education”.

Cement to be

But Mr Sharif’s government is pinning its hopes on yet more infrastructure to fix the country’s economic problems, in the form of a $46bn investment scheme known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Much of it is being financed on commercial terms, including several power plants. Pakistan undoubtedly needs to relieve a chronic shortage of electricity. But critics fear the country will struggle to pay back the debt, especially if foreign-exchange earnings from exports continue to dwindle. At the very least, the government will need to continue chasing deadbeat customers to pay their bills and cutting expensive subsidies—steps that are deeply unpopular.

In addition to boosting Pakistan’s power supply, CPEC is supposed to link China by land to Gwadar, a deep-water port on the Arabian Sea, in the hope of creating a lucrative new trade route. New or upgraded roads will stretch the length of the country. The Karakoram Highway between the two countries, which was built in the 1960s at vast expense over a high and crumbly mountain range, is being upgraded as part of the trade corridor. But it forever needs patching up and is little used. Sceptics say Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region, is still too poor for better transport links to make much difference to Pakistan’s economy. Securing isolated stretches of road from separatist rebels in Balochistan is also gobbling up large amounts of cash.

Lijian Zhao, a Chinese diplomat, says China is all too aware that Pakistan needs more than just big-ticket infrastructure if it is to flourish. Disarmingly, he praises the efforts of Britain and other countries to improve Pakistan’s “software”, such as education and the rule of law. “But China’s expertise is hardware,” says Mr Zhao.

It may not concern Mr Sharif unduly if the next generation of roads is as deserted as the last. Civilian governments have often struggled to get much done in between military coups, but voters are impressed by gleaming new projects, even if they never use them. It’s an approach that has worked for Mr Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz, the popular chief minister of Punjab province. He has lavished resources on endless sequences of over- and underpasses to create “signal-free” traffic corridors in Lahore, the provincial capital, that are of most benefit to the rich minority who can afford cars.

There are limits, however. Khawaja Saad Rafique, the railways minister, recently admitted to parliament that the country would not be getting a bullet train after all. “When we asked the Chinese about it, they laughed at us,” he said.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...ds-and-railways-even-though-existing-ones-are

 

[my2cents]

Building infrastructure is good, the writer is complaining about why this motorway is not benefitting the masses? the motorway is 90km farther than the ordinary (Grand Trunk Road) route, do u prefer to go for a shorter or farther route? With 90km shorter you can save much time and oil. And thats why majority of traffic go through Grand Trunk Road.

I see toll booths on your motorways. Are these motorways financed on built, operate and transfer(MOT) basis?? If so, the financers should have recouped their money by now.

 

[Nike]

Pakistan HDI ranks 147, one of the lowest in Asia. Less than 70 per cent of total population is literate. Less than 40 percent of population experience tertiery education. With mass of people illiterate or from low education background it seems hard for average Pakistani to getting a much complex jobs or chance to expand their economic baseline through private ventures... higher education for the mass means more people educated enough to handling more complex jobs in which required complex analythical thinking, complex skill and among other.

Is beyond me if Pakistan gov. pursue so hard on White elephant projects meanwhile the majority of people cant utilize the hardwares being build or had been built into the most potential. China, South Korea, Japan all do their wonder by building their software first, preparing their human resources well so they can take every opportunity with the efficiency. Right now, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Phillipine and Vietnam doing the same and trying to improve HDI at every chances.

my data is based on UN Reports on Pakistan HDI.

@Nilgiri

 

[Nilgiri]

Pakistan HDI ranks 147, one of the lowest in Asia. Less than 70 per cent of total population is literate. Less than 40 percent of population experience tertiery education. With mass of people illiterate or from low education background it seems hard for average Pakistani to getting a much complex jobs or chance to expand their economic baseline through private ventures... higher education for the mass means more people educated enough to handling more complex jobs in which required complex analythical thinking, complex skill and among other.

Is beyond me if Pakistan gov. pursue so hard on White elephant projects meanwhile the majority of people cant utilize the hardwares being build or had been built into the most potential. China, South Korea, Japan all do their wonder by building their software first, preparing their human resources well so they can take every opportunity with the efficiency. Right now, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Phillipine and Vietnam doing the same and trying to improve HDI at every chances.

my data is based on UN Reports on Pakistan HDI.

@Nilgiri

Yup. Education under-investment is the root cause of the biggest problems in Pakistan and South Asia in general.

Fancy Infrastructure and Military are two ways a govt can trumpet its raison-d'etre while burdening the education sector with massive legislations (to keep away/ control "competitors") and then under-funding it to keep captive, controllable populations that will continue to vote/back them on relative non-issues wrapped into the package of "nationalism" and "patriotism".

Not saying Fancy infra and military are always bad, but the priority is very skewed in this part of the world. There are very large numbers of people live in a legacy of foreigner domination and emotive, divisive issues like religion (both fed off the other for a very long time)...and they crystalise these when born into the elite or somehow manage to migrate to a better status....so it perpetuates from top to bottom to add to the bottom to top resistance/inertia.

There are promising agents of change and notable genuine undercurrents that go against this flow, but I fear it will take a very long time for this underlying attitude to be buried and replaced with something truly noble and progressive across this region. It is differing levels of grandiose failure across the board, and people here are so quick to argue about which X or Y number is marginally better in A or B country....or worse yet dont even have numbers but just their disgusting raw emotion and prejudice....thinking because they got money and the internet, they are somehow better than some rotten village thug in their thinking.

More and more I read this forum and others, I truly understand that knowledge and wisdom are two very different things with only some intersection!

It is sad when this is the only real thing that unites people from this homeland region of mine and the "saving grace" seems to be it is more globally spread and homogeneous than I once believed.

So I and others got to work with the hand we are dealt to improve things....and hope for the best in the end.

 

[Nike]

Yup. Education under-investment is the root cause of the biggest problems in Pakistan and South Asia in general.

Fancy Infrastructure and Military are two ways a govt can trumpet its raison-d'etre while burdening the education sector with massive legislations (to keep away/ control "competitors") and then under-funding it to keep captive, controllable populations that will continue to vote/back them on relative non-issues wrapped into the package of "nationalism" and "patriotism".

Not saying Fancy infra and military are always bad, but the priority is very skewed in this part of the world. There are very large numbers of people live in a legacy of foreigner domination and emotive, divisive issues like religion (both fed off the other for a very long time)...and they crystalise these when born into the elite or somehow manage to migrate to a better status....so it perpetuates from top to bottom to add to the bottom to top resistance/inertia.

There are promising agents of change and notable genuine undercurrents that go against this flow, but I fear it will take a very long time for this underlying attitude to be buried and replaced with something truly noble and progressive across this region. It is differing levels of grandiose failure across the board, and people here are so quick to argue about which X or Y number is marginally better in A or B country....or worse yet dont even have numbers but just their disgusting raw emotion and prejudice....thinking because they got money and the internet, they are somehow better than some rotten village thug in their thinking.

More and more I read this forum and others, I truly understand that knowledge and wisdom are two very different things with only some intersection!

It is sad when this is the only real thing that unites people from this homeland region of mine and the "saving grace" seems to be it is more globally spread and homogeneous than I once believed.

dont know much about the socio culture phsyche reasoning behind it's. But what Pakistan do right now, is although seems good from some points of view but still not good enough to tackle the roots of what holding back their economic growth potential.

Myself is far from libertards who promoting social securities agenda, like free education, free healthcare and so on as it always be burden for government budgets in which can be allocated into better spending.

 

[Kabira]

Yup. Education under-investment is the root cause of the biggest problems in Pakistan and South Asia in general.

Fancy Infrastructure and Military are two ways a govt can trumpet its raison-d'etre while burdening the education sector with massive legislations (to keep away/ control "competitors") and then under-funding it to keep captive, controllable populations that will continue to vote/back them on relative non-issues wrapped into the package of "nationalism" and "patriotism".

Not saying Fancy infra and military are always bad, but the priority is very skewed in this part of the world. There are very large numbers of people live in a legacy of foreigner domination and emotive, divisive issues like religion (both fed off the other for a very long time)...and they crystalise these when born into the elite or somehow manage to migrate to a better status....so it perpetuates from top to bottom to add to the bottom to top resistance/inertia.

There are promising agents of change and notable genuine undercurrents that go against this flow, but I fear it will take a very long time for this underlying attitude to be buried and replaced with something truly noble and progressive across this region. It is differing levels of grandiose failure across the board, and people here are so quick to argue about which X or Y number is marginally better in A or B country....or worse yet dont even have numbers but just their disgusting raw emotion and prejudice....thinking because they got money and the internet, they are somehow better than some rotten village thug in their thinking.

More and more I read this forum and others, I truly understand that knowledge and wisdom are two very different things with only some intersection!

It is sad when this is the only real thing that unites people from this homeland region of mine and the "saving grace" seems to be it is more globally spread and homogeneous than I once believed.

So I and others got to work with the hand we are dealt to improve things....and hope for the best in the end.

Most of new motorways are BOT projects. Sialkot-Lahore, Karachi-Hydrabad, Multan-Sukkur, Hydrabad-Sukkur, Lahore-Abdul Hakim. So federal is spending least amount of money from its own resources. Only DI-Khan-Hakla motorway is from development budget because it goes through relatively poor area of south KPK and south punjab thal region with less traffic.

All these motorways will be completed by 2018-2019 and cost more then $10 billion. People who say government need to spend on other areas doesn't know what they are talking about.

 

[Aslam Khokhar]

The key to a vibrant economy is production, not infrastructure. Producing goods of increasing value and sophistication is what moves an economy.

The emphasis on infrastructure has been a mistake.

I'd differ a little... Production without an Infrastructure to reach the customer is useless... similarly, an Infrastructure with specifically usage for the "Product" is just waste of time and money. Those both elements go side by side.

Now here is a lil catch. Infrastructure is mainly driven by the Government while the Production a sector of both public and private sectors. If there is no infrastructure, no investor is going to make a production facility over there. But if the infrastructure is available, buildup of production facility takes place with passage of time.

So, in my opinion, making infrastructure available for the potential producers is a basic element to be started with...