Rewriting Pakistan's economic destiny

There comes a time in a nation's history when mere survival ceases to be a virtue and becomes a verdict. When continuity without reform is not resilience, but retreat.

Today, Pakistan finds itself at such a crossroads. The economic scaffolding built on remittances, devaluation and bureaucratic inertia is unsustainable. We must now shift from patchwork endurance to sovereign design, from short-term inflows to long-term economic architecture.

This reckoning begins with an uncomfortable truth: for far too long, Pakistan has been sustained not by the strength of its institutions, but by the sacrifice of its diaspora. This year alone, over $38 billion in remittances flowed into the country. But behind each dollar lies not a policy triumph, but a story of departure. Millions of Pakistanis have left their homeland in search of dignity and opportunity, sending back not just their earnings, but also silent prayers for a reformed homeland.

Remittances are not a national economic strategy. They are the monetisation of separation. They may ease external accounts, but they cannot build internal capacity. The tragedy is not that we rely on remittances, but that we have failed to transform that reliance into national renewal.

To call ourselves an economy while exporting labour and importing sustenance is to mistake motion for momentum. What we have built is a remittance republic — a model that is underperforming while also reflecting a vacuum of strategic imagination. In contrast, in the area where real long-term confidence in a country is measured, foreign direct investment, Pakistan has sharply declined.

In 2024, FDI barely touched $1.8 billion, less than one-third of what we attracted in 2007. Despite the creation of the Special Investment Facilitation Council and a string of global forums, declarations have consistently outpaced delivery.

From premiers to generals, from civil servants to special assistants, everyone today speaks the language of investment. Yet the numbers continue to betray the rhetoric. Because systems do not change through speeches; execution is what is required. And execution is not possible without credibility.

Instead of an investment gap, Pakistan has a credibility deficit. We confuse activity with achievement. We treat investor confidence as a communications challenge rather than a structural priority. But capital follows systems and responds to transparency, speed, enforceability and trust.

Today, a single investor in Pakistan must navigate over 20 uncoordinated federal regulators — each operating in silos, each demanding redundant documentation and none integrated into a common interface. What we call oversight is, in reality, bureaucratic obstruction. And what the investor experiences is not diligence but suffocation.

For decades, we have relied on the same tired toolkit: devaluation, import suppression, short-term bailouts and rhetorical reform. Since 1990, the Pakistani rupee has depreciated at an average rate of eight per cent per year, not solely due to market forces, but also due to repeated institutional failures. Devaluation, once a tool of last resort, has become a default policy. It rewards speculation, penalises savings and erodes social trust. No investor bets on a currency in freefall. No citizen builds wealth in a system where policy decisions vaporise value.

While we erode predictability, our neighbours engineer it. India, facing similar complexities, moved to a single-window digital platform for corporate approvals, drastically improving its ease of doing business. Saudi Arabia, under Vision 2030, is well on its way to attracting $100 billion in FDI, with over $35 billion already secured. Dubai, a city built on sand, draws $26 billion annually in real estate investment, not because of tax tricks or sunshine, but because it offers legal clarity, enforceability and predictability.

Vietnam, once at a similar level of institutional fragility, has transformed itself into a manufacturing and export powerhouse. Through stable governance, coherent regulation and consistent trade policy, it has emerged as a magnet for capital. The message is clear: capital is anchored in systems, not sentiments. The reform Pakistan now requires must be constitutional in spirit and structural in form. We must establish a sovereign, fully integrated, single-window digital platform — the Pakistan Business Gateway — that centralises all regulatory, licensing, tariff and infrastructure approvals under one command.

But this must not be an IT project; it must be a signal of intent. A declaration that the era of regulatory hostility is over, and the age of investor dignity has begun. With one-time data entry, cross-institutional interoperability, enforceable timelines and real-time application tracking, this platform must demonstrate that Pakistan has moved from friction to facilitation.

This transformation is ideological. It redefines governance as enabling, not gatekeeping. It declares that enterprise is not a favour to be granted, but a partnership to be honoured and that trust is now the currency of state-market relations.

And as we seek to attract global capital, we must also re-imagine the capital already flowing into our veins: remittances. Every overseas Pakistani who wires money home is making an investment — one without security, return or voice. That must change. We must move from applause to inclusion, and from ceremonial thanks to institutional respect. The remitter is a stakeholder, not a donor. And that stake must be returned with structure.

To that end, Pakistan must create a Remittance Sovereign Account (RSA), a sovereign-backed, professionally managed platform that channels remitted funds into real economic assets. Through diaspora bonds, matched contributions, pooled vehicles and co-investment mechanisms, we can convert consumption support into capital formation. Let the remitter become a co-owner of Pakistan’s future and of its power plants, export zones and industrial corridors. Let their voice be heard not only in speeches, but also in boardrooms.

For this vision to take root, the soil must be fertile. The first encounter between any remitter or investor and the Pakistani state – whether at the airport, the tax office or the regulator – must not be marked by suspicion, humiliation or inefficiency. It must reflect dignity, service and clarity. Our tax regime must be anchored in a ten-year charter: predictable, consensus-based and insulated from political cycles. Dispute resolution must be swift and enforceable.

The judiciary must prioritise economic justice with the same urgency as political drama. Most of all, institutional trust must become the foundation of our financial architecture.

And the Pakistani state must stop mistaking nationalism for economic isolationism. We will remain in fiscal captivity unless we unlock regional trade. Geography is not our prison; it is our passage. We cannot grow by trading more with lenders than with neighbours. Afghanistan, Central Asia and even India must return to our strategic calculus — as trade routes.

Let us then declare: the age of dual dependency is over. No more surviving on workers' wages and creditors' concessions. We must build a Pakistan that earns trust, honours contracts, delivers systems and rewards sacrifice. Let remittances be canalised. Let investment be respected. Let governance be re-engineered. Let reform be rooted. Nations do not rise by what they receive. They rise by what they are ready to reform.

If Pakistan is to transition from a remittance republic to an investment nation, that transformation must begin in systems and in architecture. Not in nostalgia for what we were, but in discipline for what we must become. This is the moment.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

The writer is a political economist, public policy commentator and advocate for principled leadership and regional cooperation across the Muslim world.

Originally published in The News