khanz
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Pakistan has a lot of potential. In fact, she's been listed now as an emerging market, a massive upgrade from the previous frontier market status. Emerging market status means that Pakistan has met many growth oriented calculations the WB uses, and she is now considered in the same category of countries like Brazil, Mexico, Russia, India and China.
But do remember, there is no real comparison with these countries as these countries have been experiencing growth for the past two decades, Pakistan is now starting. But nevertheless, its on the growth path. Give it 10-15 years and you will see an entirely different Pakistan than what you knew till a few years ago. Just recently, it has changed a lot in the past few years. The infrastructure work, the electric generation projects, the new sea port in Gawader, etc. This is serious stuff and high potential. Now, to give you some facts about what this means and some comparisons about the potential:
- The coastal areas of Pakistan are easily around 1100 KM's (about 690 miles) and a population of 200 million people. The UAE has a coastline of about 800 KM's and a population of less than 12 million, including immigrant workers. To understand the potential, let's now compare something similar from the US, let's take a sample demographic sea coastline area from Plymouth, NC till New Port, RI (also roughly 1100+ KM or about 680 miles, the same as Pakistan).
Pakistan with this coastline area, has a much, much larger population than the UAE (200 million vs. 12 million), and the US sample area from about 8 US states' coastline I defined above, (the population comparison is 200 million people of Pakistan, vs. 70 million people living in the US states being used as a sample).
So now let's do numbers. The UAE has 20 ports within 800 KM area (majority of these are Oil exporting terminals), the US in comparable sample area has about 18 ports. Majority of these ports represent port districts such as NY/NJ ports which span over 25 miles of port area meaning many ports combined together to make up a "district".
So now to put things in perspective, the UAE's exports are around $ 324 billion and imports around $ 274 billion (total $ 598 billion volume). About 80% of this is through the ports, but the population is only 12 million people. The US, through the sample area of 8 states coastline I've taken, imports and exports over $ 800 billion to $ 1 trillion (the US does around $ 4 Trillion worth of exports and imports every year from all ports).
So now the conclusion is, we took a much smaller country with less than 10% of the population compared to Pakistan, with almost 3 times the GDP. We then took less than half the US east coast as a sample coastline area to what Pakistan has, and counted the ports and the business volume in billions there to.
Comparing this to Pakistan, she only has 1 active port and that is Karachi, Gawader is now going operational. But remember, there is enough room to build 15+ ports for all purposes, deep, medium and light shipping, etc, throughout the 1100 KM area available. Through Gawader, Pakistan will be providing for the Western Chinese population and eventually, to some Central Russian estates. That adds over 400 million more consumers which will use Pakistan's trade routes.
So expect more ports to be built and more shipping, trucking and many new cities to be formed. If I can guess, Pakistan, in the next 5-8 years would pass the UAE in GDP and would get closer to $ 800 billion mark or $ 1 trillion mark. There is no guess work there. The estimates are that Pakistan should be around $ 1.5 trillion economy by 2025-2030. But a democratic and business friendly environment is a must for this kind of growth.
Pakistan is the 6th largest country population wise and the 3rd largest English speaking country on the globe. There is no reason that within the next 2-3 decades it can't become the top 12th or 13th economy and worth over $ 3-4 trillion. Even at over $ 1.5 trillion, this growth would do wonders to Pakistan, in terms of making her look and feel like a UAE if you will. Because unlike Brazil, Mexico or India, the Pakistan's area or depth, which is a disadvantage militarily, becomes a blessing economically as it won't require near the amount of money others would due to their larger size, to create much more modern infrastructure. You'll pay a lot more to build a house over 5 acres for 100 people, then building a house on 1 acres for 25 people. So the quality of life in Pakistan will grow significantly in the next few years. Sort of the future South Korea if you will.
If in the future it becomes even half the country South Korea is today then I'd be really happy.
