After decades of industrial atrophy, Pakistan’s long-awaited 10-year industrial policy arrives with promises of reform and renewal. From tax revisions to SME support, the framework suggests a serious pivot. Yet behind the polished structure lies a critical flaw — the absence of key industrial voices. With over a dozen committees formed and the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) conspicuously sidelined, the question looms: Can a national revival plan succeed without the participation of those who power the engine?
For nearly thirty weary years, Pakistan’s industrial backbone has been progressively hollowed, its once-pulsing arteries reduced to creaking pipes. The recent greenlight granted by the government for a decade-spanning industrial revival policy is less a triumph and more a belated necessity — yet its arrival warrants a nod of cautious acknowledgment.
The framework, by and large, strikes the right neural clusters — pledging resurrection of moribund enterprises, fortification of small and medium economic engines, rationalisation of corporate tax regimes, and excavation of obsolete legislative debris. The formation of granular sub-committees for swift operationalisation gives the proposal a spine — something often absent in earlier half-hearted declarations.
Still, the most elaborate scaffold crumbles when key architects are banished from the drafting table. The disquiet voiced by the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) illuminates a stark paradox — how does a national blueprint for industrial resurgence omit the counsel of those commanding the lion’s share of industrial heft? Especially a body like PBC, which has consistently agitated for such a roadmap and underpinned its plea with exhaustive data under its “Make-in-Pakistan” rubric?
As the PBC rightly highlights, the draft blueprint was neither floated for review nor was the council’s representation meaningfully included in the pivotal sub-committees charting the policy’s course. Instead, trader collectives appear to have commandeered the seats, stirring misgivings that the entire apparatus may be veering toward ephemeral mercantile gratifications instead of a long-haul industrial renaissance.
This isn’t a trifling lapse. The PBC embodies close to 100 of the nation’s industrial juggernauts — domestic and multinational — which collectively catalyse around 40% of exports and lubricate employment across formal supply arteries. Marginalising such a reservoir of applied intelligence and institutional memory diminishes the structural integrity of any revivalist ambition. If reinvigorating the industrial ecosystem is the proclaimed aim, then eclipsing those who constitute its very spine is both myopic and maladroit.
Granted, the administration’s haste is not unfounded. The industrial sector has languished in contraction, exports are sputtering, and macroeconomic tremors demand an urgent recalibration. The government often invoke the phrase “industrial revolution.” Yet, revolutions are not midwifed by committees bereft of expertise. Certainly not ones that ignore their most competent co-architects.
A closer dissection reveals a sprawling labyrinth of committees — eight advisory clusters, ten execution arms, and an anticipated swarm of oversight panels waiting in the wings. On parchment, this looks grand — intricate, even — but if the skeleton becomes more theatre than tool, and expert wisdom remains untranslated into real-world reform, then this intricate edifice risks sinking into the swamp of bureaucratic inertia.
The document does boast elements of foresight — improved credit pipelines for SMEs, early-warning systems for industrial ailments, and a legal environment more hospitable to investors. Yet, noble aspirations alone do not animate transformation. The durability of these reforms will rest, not on proclamation, but on the spine of their implementation — which again circles us back to the absentees at the policy table.
It is vital to underscore that the Pakistan Business Council hasn’t tossed this policy into the dustbin. On the contrary, it has greeted the blueprint’s thrust with measured optimism and endorsed several of its objectives. Its critique is not aimed at the vision, but at the closed-door process by which that vision was sculpted. This divergence between ambition and methodology intensifies the necessity for a corrective gesture from the state.
A sincere recalibration — one that reevaluates the makeup of the implementation machinery and folds the PBC into the operational heart of the policy — would do more than mend bruised egos. It would broadcast a message of governance maturity and restore faith in institutional accountability.
If this grand scheme is to evolve beyond rhetorical flourish and catalyse a genuine industrial resurgence, then it must tether itself to informed stewardship and flawless execution. That necessitates deploying institutions armed with intellect, data troves, and connective sinews — those who can convert blueprint into backbone. Anything less would be yet another manuscript in the state’s archive of unfulfilled economic blueprints, gathering dust while the wheels of industry remain rusted still.
For this policy to be more than ceremonial ink on paper, it must be built not just on intent, but on informed collaboration. Execution without expertise breeds delay; ambition without inclusion breeds distrust. If Pakistan truly seeks to revive its industrial core, it must draw on the institutions best equipped to turn vision into verifiable outcomes. Without that, this policy risks becoming just another chapter in the country’s long anthology of missed economic opportunities.