The rich list

Only those countries will succeed in future that have a desire to do whatever is necessary to grow their economies.

It is rare to see Pakistan make it near the top of any global list of countries for positive economic achievements. So perhaps, it is understandable to see Pakistanis excited by Jim O’Neill’s projections that the total size of the Pakistani economy could reach $3.3 trillion by 2050, which would make it then the 18^th largest economy in the world. Mr O’Neill, after all, is not just anybody. He was, until recently, the chief economist of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, and the head of its asset management division. He is the man credited with inventing the acronym BRIC, representing Brazil, India, Russia and China, the four countries that he predicted over a decade ago would have an outsize impact on the global economy.

But precisely for those reasons, we would urge our fellow compatriots to pay careful attention to Mr O’Neill’s words. He does not predict that it is Pakistan’s destiny to become that large an economy. He merely suggests that it has the potential to become that large. Yet more important than what he said about Pakistan was what he did not say. He did not include Pakistan in his next list of countries that had the potential to have a positively disruptive impact on the global economy. On that list, he included Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. All four economies have two things in common: they serve as bridges between significantly large economic blocs and their governments have taken tough decisions to spur their economies towards high growth.

By rights, Pakistan could have fit into that category since we meet the first condition. Our economy can easily serve as the bridge between the Middle East and South Asia. However, our political class’ utter disinterest in economic reform has resulted in our exclusion from that list. O’Neill’s observations are worth noting: only those countries will succeed over the next century that have a desire to do whatever is necessary to grow their economies. Unfortunately, we have not yet placed ourselves on that list.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th,  2014.

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