Traditionally countries have found a way to minimize external conflicts, spent money to modernize their agriculture production, and invested the profits from the excess agricultural productivity into industry. Our agricultural output is a quarter of the global average, and 60% of the work force depends on agriculture. Modernize the agriculture will pay off multiple folds and broaden the tax base, from which we can invest in the dams, power grid, and modernization of our industrial ventures, such as Mining, so we can explore for and mine our own resources such as the Reko Diq Mine.
Incentives need to be introduced to get investors to modernize our agriculture and the value added chain associated with it rather then build more real estate.
Secondly, affordable quality housing (5 story apartment buildings) should be incentivized rather then single family homes, to maximize density in a sustainable way to maximize the use of public services (like expensive public transportation projects) for the cost being spent on them, lowering the per ride cost and ending the need to subsidize the service. We should study the example of the Haussmann rebuilding of Paris.
The government should not be in the business of subsidizing a lot of businesses and should be selling off some percentage of each of its assets to private firms to take the burden off the nation. These private firms can bring in experts to build up the business ventures, and both can share in the profits, which for the government will help make it a self sustaining business at the very least; ending subsidies.
A lot of the debt should be taken on by private companies and in return they should be given contracts in a shared risk shared benefit model. The amount of interest we are paying on some of these loans for potentially subpar infrastructure is outrageous.
There is so much Pakistan leaves on the table in terms of making our industrial and agricultural processes more efficient that could help raise productivity or at least cut input costs, especially of import goods like fossil fuels. We also need to foster our own industries, especially the media, so our people stop consuming Bollywood, and spending on their products while we have another set of products to export to the world.
Attracting FDI should be a top priority. Should Pakistan get out of the FATF grey list, it should focus on raising its bond rating and refinancing its foreign loans to a lower interest rate, saving money annually. Also, creating or revamping our banks overseas to attract members of the diaspora and others should also be prioritized. A ROI for someone putting their money in the bank should be lower then what Pakistan had been offering in its bonds but higher then average returns in index funds (like those following the S&P) is a good way to attract a lot more investors. Getting included in emerging market pension funds is also a good way to attract investment, which is something India has been doing for at least a decade if I remember correctly.
