The Return of Industrial Policy and Revival of Pakistan’s Economy: Possibilities of Learning, Industrial and Technology Policies

After being among the earliest countries to embark on the East Asian path, Pakistan fell away but was still among the ten fastest growing economies of the world during 1960–90. However, the seeds for the subsequent economic and technological malaise were also sown in that period. This paper provides an overview of recent theoretical and empirical work on industrial policies – more accurately labeled learning, industrial and technology (LIT) policies – and examines their implications for Pakistan. These include a selective, more sharply focused approach than the comprehensive agendas of reforms that have become common. Substantial islands of success with industrial policies have emerged in a variety of institutional and governance settings, different from those of the original East Asian developmental states. They offer valuable lessons. Raising the abysmally low level of investment in Pakistan is a requirement as well as an outcome and an instrument of industrial policies. This argues for a revival of development finance to stimulate investment as well as to direct it towards selective targets. How to mitigate the risks of this and other instruments of industrial policy to get the risk–reward ratio right is another concern of the paper. An important target of such policies should be the technological upgrading of existing industries. There is enormous scope for doing so, with international comparisons suggesting that Pakistani manufacturing does poorly – both in terms of variance in productivity between firms within an industry as well as in introducing new technologies and products. Whilst the constraints of the politics–governance–security/terrorism nexus are beyond the scope of the paper, their salience cannot be underestimated.