Look at videos of Pakistan in 1990 when it had a population about 100 Million less than we do now and you'll find little has changed:
These arguments about "overpopulation" have been made since 1798 in fact it may have been ongoing since the times of Tertullian in 160 AD:
Pakistan's large and burgeoning population is actually a massive boon for the nations economy not a hindrance the problem has always been you have governments, both military and civilian, particularly since the 90s that have no clue how to develop the countries economy.
A prime example is the discovery of Thar lignite shortly after Zia's assassination in 1988 through a program he initiated looking for water in Thar. Pakistan is an energy starved nation that imports its oil and gas so what did the country do with this immense domestic resource of fuel that would have created jobs in Pakistan and saved it tens of billions in foreign exchange?
Nothing.
Even now we've continued to do largely nothing.
How about collecting taxes and investing in local industries to eliminate imports, investing in agriculture to increase per acre yields, investing in the development of critical infrastructure like housing and water sanitation, investing in mining?
Lol, well I'm not sure if I'm the usual culprit but I disagree with this approach and think it's absolutely wasteful.
Pakistani governments seem to operate on the model of "feed a man a fish you feed him for a day..." that's it.
The economic liberalization imposed on Pakistan by the Nawaz Sharif government in the mid 90s and followed up on by Musharraf via his FTA to China and just continued under Zardari essentially equated into one large welfare scheme that subsidized everything for everyone.
Based on my previous calculations those tariffs accounted for ~4% of GDP in tax revenue hence why Pakistan's tax to GDP fell below the 10% mark and stayed that way for years.
As per the WB it appears that Pakistan collects more tax revenue as a percentage of the overall GDP than China, Bangladesh and India do... so why is our economy so much worse off?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=PK-IN-BD-CN
It's these welfare programs/schemes.
We're spending so much on imports and social welfare programs and taking on so much debt to do it that there's less than nothing for industries while future governments are inundated with ever mounting debt and large portions of our yearly budget needing to be allocated just to pay off the interest on those debts.
At least what Khan is doing is targeting those subsidies towards the poor which is far better than what the previous governments did but this will accomplish little to nothing in the long run.
We need investment in the FBR to collect taxes, they've been chronically underfunded for maybe decades. Back in FY14 I calculated their budget was somewhere around 500-1400% less than what it should have been considering the size of the Pakistani economy especially when you compare their budget to the IRS, CRA, JTA, etc... and their respective economies.
The FBR doesn't have the money to hire the staff, buy the equipment or purchase the necessary third party services they need to do their job effectively. It needs money to hire and train lawyers specialized in prosecuting tax evasion cases, needs people to perform audits, needs to hire people to investigate/canvas on foot, needs data scientists and super computers to analyze company payroll and imports/exports data as well as satellite imagery to map out incomes based on property and asset ownership.
However if what the FBR collects is just thrown away on imported food, fuel and other consumables it does nothing for Pakistan in the long run.