One of the lesser known stories that did not quite make a buzz - falling prey to the stereotyped international coverage of Pakistan as usual - relates to the country’s rapid strides on the economic front. 
All too conveniently, Islamabad is seen through geopolitical prisms that rarely move from the standard “terrorism” fix and border blues. There, too, the narrative is not terribly well informed.  
Meanwhile, at home, it’s quite a political zeitgeist as would be expected in a country where politics is a staple diet - out in the streets as well as prime time television. This de rigueur indulgence in who said what, and how and why, often renders more substantive issues like the economy to a side show. 
A report by the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - a multinational professional services network with headquarters in London and considered among the ‘Big Four’ auditors - recently estimated that Pakistan could become the world’s 16th largest economy by 2050 based on its GDP at purchasing power parity.
On a global scale, this is quite rich and projected to overtake economies like Italy and Canada, currently ranked 12th and 17th, respectively. 
A table appended to the PwC report indicates that on the basis of purchasing power parity, Pakistan would climb from its current 24th place (with GDP at purchasing power parity amounting to $988bn) to 20th place ($1.87tn) by 2030; and to 16th place ($4.2tn) by 2050.
In terms of GDP at real market exchange rate, Pakistan’s economy is projected to rise from its current 28th place ($284bn) to 27th by 2030 ($776bn); and to 19th ($2.8tn) by 2050. 
GDP at purchasing power parity adjusts for price level differences across countries and provides a better measure of the volume of goods and services produced in an economy.
In contrast, GDP at market exchange rate gives a better measure of the value of goods and services produced in an economy, converting a country’s GDP in national currencies to the US dollar based on current market exchange rates.
The remarkable thing about this economic growth is that it has come despite fire-and-brimstone political challenges faced by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz since its return to power in 2013. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has rarely had a respite in his third stint despite a comfortable majority at the Centre and in his home province of Punjab, which provides the fulcrum of power thanks to its domineering numbers in the parliament.
Sharif, an industrialist, rode to power four years ago on the plank of stabilising and improving the bobbing economy, central to which was the severe energy crisis that led to factories being shut down and businesses coming to grief before he approved more than a dozen coal, hydro, gas and combined cycle power generation plants that are primed to start generating electricity this mid-summer. 
Sharif fended off the stiff challenge posed by the opposition Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf’s allegations of poll rigging following a massive street agitation in 2014 but one that eventually led to the dismissal of the charges by a judicial commission. For a better part of the last year, he has also been embroiled in a fight to clear his family’s name in the Panama Papers case that has united the opposition and provided a field day to the media. 
Last year, Pakistan hit a major milestone when the International Monetary Fund declared the country had come out of an economic crisis and stabilised its economy after completing a bailout programme. With its improved credit rating and a massive boost from a $46bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project - pivoted around infrastructure, power and transport development - confidence in Pakistan’s economy has grown manifold.
Experts, however, caution that the PwC projection has a strong accent on potential and current momentum gathering pace. In short, the growth needs to be sustained over the long term. 
“To realise this growth potential,” the PwC report says, “emerging market governments need to implement structural reforms to improve macroeconomic stability, diversify their economies away from undue reliance on natural resources, and develop effective political and legal institutions”.
Future GDP growth, it says, would be pinned on four variables: demographics; growth in the quality of the workforce; growth in physical capital stock; and technological progress.  
Mohamed Sabir, a senior economist at the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) in Karachi, conjectures that the post-IMF period would be the litmus test for the government. “It would take sustained growth of around 6% for five successive years to make a real dent in poverty,” he said recently.
However, there is considerable promise given the country’s young and dynamic workforce - Pakistan has the second largest growth in the number of average working age population till 2050 after Egypt - and the country’s food self-sufficiency. 
The resilience in the face of political and security challenges has prompted Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at the George Mason University, and a Bloomberg columnist, to pick Pakistan as the country to watch out for with its improved economic indicators - be it the rising stock market, GDP growth or retail boom - in recent years. 
“Pakistan’s improvement matters because, with approximately 200mn people, it is the sixth most populous country in the world. It is also a nuclear power, and arguably a key to peace in the region. I don’t know many people who were predicting Pakistan’s progress in 2001, and so (it) is one of the world’s most pleasant surprises,” Cowen wrote in a similarly titled piece Pakistan’s Economy Is A Pleasant Surprise in February this year. 
Werner Liepach, Pakistan country director for the Asian Development Bank, agrees. Given the challenging global context, he recently said, “Contrary to what many believe, Pakistan is actually doing quite well.”
“The benefits of growth in Pakistan are actually more widespread as compared to many other developing countries that may show higher levels of growth, but with greater inequality,” he pointed out before concluding that there was of course room to improve. 


*The writer is Community Editor




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