Bevvy Rosh
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Pakistan is beyond the point of no-return..It has been since 2015 and CPEC loans started piling up. Pakistan was a poor country to begin with and CPEC loans broke the camel's back. Overpopulation, lack of education, elite capture of power, chinese capture of domestic market, low industrialisation, dependance on essential imports (petroleum, wheat, pulses) and extremely unfavourable electricity price deals with Chinese power producers backed by soverign guarantee have left Pakistan economically unsustainable. Pakistan's local manufacturing shut down as market was flooded with cheap chinese goods and textile exports shut down due to high cost of electricity.Sorry to say, but economists worth their salt who are close friends of mine and, study South Asia & East Asian economies, and are employed by universities, brokerage houses, and family office(s) say even with a technocratic government in place, the country is at a point of no return economically. What's going to strangle Pakistan is the geopolitics of the region.
Pakistan can develop only in a very long duration of time, maybe 30-40 years. I believe that Afganistan would overtake Pakistan economically in 10-15 years because of their low population and mineral wealth. I would advisePakistani Pashtoons to invest excess money in real estate in Afganistan, will pay off in the long run. Pakistan will become the poorest region of South-East Asia once Afganistan becomes richer and will remain so for few decades. The same story of Bangladesh is being repeated in front of our eyes. West Pakistanis believed BD would collapse without them, but today a primary schoolteacher in Dhaka earns more than a college professor in Karachi.
I don't think anyone can do anything at this point. IMF and World Bank used to be lenient with defaulting countries, whereas China will extract it's full pound of flesh. this problem is beyond IK or technocrats. The road to reconstruction will be long and painful.
Pakistanis need to understand that they're not suffering from INFLATION, they're suffering from POVERTY. Both seem smiliar but time duration is different. Inflation is temporary(weeks or months), poverty lasts generations. Pak will be poor for at least 2-3 generations.