Pakistan on
the Road to Becoming an Asian Tiger
By Pervaiz Lodhie
Torrance, CA
Once again I am returning from Pakistan to LA
after a successful trip. I now travel to Pakistan
a few times a year. I am never disappointed with
the progress I see, and I wonder where the negative
articles about Pakistan come from. This time I
went as a Corporate Board member of the US Pakistan
Business Council (www.uspakistan.org) with a fifteen-member
high-level business delegation to Islamabad.
High-level is really an understatement for this
delegation because the total market capitalization
of the group exceeded one trillion dollars (Yes,
one trillion with a “t”). The delegation
included executives like Ahmet Bozer of Coca-Cola,
Kursat Ozkan of General Electric, Stephen Du Mont
& Richard Mach of Cisco, Hassan Tavakoli of
Motorola, Mohammed Ghafari of Lucent, Nigel Thompson
of Merck Co, Robert Riordan of Black & Veatch,
Norman Collins of Citigroup, Edward Jackson of
Sweetwater Int’l, and Tom Slone of Touchstone
(a recent IT-Call Center-BPO success story in
Islamabad I have followed). Pakistani Americans
in the delegation included Shoaib Kothawala of
Hometex, Rafat Mahmood of Mahmood Investment,
Mohammed Tahir of United American Lines, and myself,
Pervaiz Lodhie of LEDtronics. Most of us in the
delegation are members of the USPBC.
Five years of hard work by the top Pakistani leadership
and placement of a good management team are starting
to pay quick dividends. All key economic and fundamental
indicators show that goals are being achieved
faster than the set time limits. Though twenty
years late, if this progress pace continues, there
is little doubt that Pakistan will be the Asian
Tiger of the near future.
There is a major shortage of hotels in Karachi,
Lahore and Islamabad at this time, but several
new hotels are currently being built. The day
our delegation started arriving on March 14 at
Serena Hotel, Islamabad was being visited by the
world’s fourth richest man, Prince Al-Waleed
bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who
is investing heavily in Pakistan. There were high-level
delegations from Malaysia, Europe, Central Asian
Countries and other Middle East countries. The
only foreign investors visibly missing from this
center of the region that will be the highest
growth region of the world are investors from
The United States of America. Middle Eastern,
European, and South Asian companies and investor
groups are quickly grabbing the major government
entities being privatized in Pakistan.
The American administration’s selective
overreaction towards Muslims around the world
after the tragedy of “9/11” and subsequent
uncalled for invasion of the sovereign Muslim
nation of Iraq iare turning global economies and
new money away from America. The signs are becoming
more and more clear that America may not be the
engine of the world economy of tomorrow. I made
this statement couple of years ago. I now read
articles in Newsweek, US News stating if America
will remain No.1 in future. It will very likely
be South Asia, which includes Pakistan. The goal
of our fifteen-member high-level USPBC business
delegation was to work towards encouraging foreign
direct investment opportunities into Pakistan
and improve the bilateral investment climate between
the USA and Pakistan. The strong travel advisory
on visiting Pakistan by the US State Department
and the insurance companies’ cancellations
of insurance policies of those who travel to Pakistan
have done more harm than good. Fortunately, multi-national
companies in the US like Coca-Cola, GE, Cisco,
Motorola, Lucent and many others, are taking the
lead, and making their own decisions to travel
to Pakistan regardless of the current travel advisories.
The US Chamber of Commerce/USBPC delegation met
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Senate Chairman Mohammad
Mian Soomro, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri,
Privatization Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Information
Technology Minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari,
Minister of State Umar Ahmad Ghuman, and Commerce
Secretary Tasneem Noorani. The delegation repeated
the same message at all meetings: “Many
good stories are taking place in Pakistan. The
reality of Pakistan is lot more positive than
the perception being created in the West. How
can the USPBC help in telling the true story of
Pakistan in the West and turn the wrong perception
around?” The US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan
Crocker was not only a great host to our delegation,
but truly committed to improving the ties of the
US and Pakistan in all sectors.
There is still a lot of work to be done in Pakistan;
all is not yet perfect. Fifty years of gross mismanagement
by a few cannot be fully fixed in five years except
by some magic. There are a few politicians, a
few bureaucrats, and a few chairmen that are not
helping the country. They are bad listeners, and
they are arrogant “mister-know-it-alls.”
A statement was made to me in passing that “we
don’t care if America comes or not. We are
doing great on our own.” Such remarks are
uncalled for.
For the first time Pakistan is showing poverty
reduction in the urban areas. The UN’s Millennium
Development Goals (MGD) and the World Bank are
looking for poverty reduction in the rural poor
masses in thousands of villages. Only the poverty
increase has now been arrested in the rural poor
by the collective efforts of many NGO’s.
The revolutionary poverty-alleviation program
of the National Commission on Human Development
(NCHD) and Pakistan Human Development Fund (PHDF)
is making major progress in bringing universal
primary education and primary health to most rural
villages through volunteering effort. As one of
the active founding directors of NCHD/PHDF, I
will be writing a report on their successes and
achievements.
Other critical problems that need to be addressed
include law and order, corruption, health care,
and education. The Transparency International
shows that the corruption index went up twenty
percent in 2004 after declining for four years.
This may be due to reduced government focus on
corruption. This sudden increase in the corruption
index should be immediately analyzed, and appropriate,
corrective actions should be taken.
Pakistan can become a model country through individual
and collective efforts by all Pakistanis and Pakistani
expatriates around the world. Pakistan has a very
large number of financially successful individuals
and corporations that need to participate in moving
Pakistan forward. Soon, Inshallah, Pakistan will
be a prosperous and proud nation.
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