By Azam Paki April 28, 2009
Time and tide waits for none. Global financial crises, which started in 2008, took the world with surprise and many of worlds most stable economies like US. UK, Japan, Germany and China felt the tremors of it. These crises were so sudden and intense that most stable industry like Automotive also affected seriously and sales of cars in some countries fell by up to 30 percent. Due to so unexpected nature of these crises, one cannot rule out the chances that these crises were very genuine. Prove of this came in early 2009 when China proposed the establishment of a common universal currency on the model of Euro to avoid such serious economic crises in future.
Very interesting these financial crises proved somewhat better for developing countries like Pakistan which are equipped with skilled and educated human resource and yet untapped by investors in many ways. To help the industry and lower the manufacturing cost, developed countries lowered the oil prices, which did benefited poor countries. At the same time, investors started looking for more investment opportunities. Pakistan, which was kept, deprived of international investment for many external and internal reasons were no longer an option to neglect. As a result, countries started looking for alternate investment environment where exceptional potential for growth and educated professional and skilled work force was available in abundance. Naturally, their heads turned towards Pakistan. The reason was obvious most technically advance country and proof of which is expertise in Atomic field and yet most under-developed in terms that population was kept victims of global issues and deprived of financial uplift. This triggered a marathon of developed countries to put their reservation about Pakistan back and get on board for mutual befits as soon as possible. This marathon was so sever Pakistan had to face some negatives of it in term of “WHO WILL RULE THE P…”.
As this marathon is going on, government of Pakistan should be very clear in who is investing in Pakistan. Pakistan should not be let hostile to investment by some selected countries under a hidden agenda so that when ever they think can blackmail Pakistan in the name of investment. The investment base should be as broad as possible so that all interested countries should be provided fare-playing ground and do not be carried away with slogans of “Friends of Pakistan”. This will make sure an environment of competition among the investors and in the interest of Pakistan.
There is a universal truth “There is no permanent friend or foe” and Pakistan had very bitter experiences trying to establishing permanent friendships, and those friends took U-turn when we need them most. If we did not learnt from past, future of our generations will be at risk. Government of Pakistan and opposition parties should monitor each other and work in hand in hands in establishing some baseline in this regard, that no more than certain percentage of investment would be allowed to go to single country.
If there was done some compromise on favoring one country over others, the result would be serious and no one should forget, what happed in 18th century when traders who came to subcontinent and ended up ruling the subcontinent.
Here i will give the example of Pakistan Air Force which was US based in early day, when thing changed unexpectedly in 70s we were left hanging in the space. It was then when we broaden our base with French and further on with Chinese based aircrafts, which gave more stability and brought back the US confidence as well.
Where there is marathon of investor friendly countries like US, UK, Japan and China there exist another class of countries which are facing investment pullout because saturation condition. Unfortunately, such countries are not very comfortable with the situation that investment is going next door. Such hostile countries tried to create a sort of panic condition to minimize the investor friendliness atmosphere, which was result of last decade or so by disturbing law and order situation in Pakistan. Pakistan has to take such countries on aggressively as well to counter their attempts to tactically maligning Pakistan. By infiltrating in sensitive areas and supporting non-state actors.
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