What industries can Pakistan target to improve capacity for exports?
Finished goods markets need to be targeted. Too much low end raw material industry at the moment.
What can Pakistan do?
Look at this. Motherboard manufacture in Taiwan.
Taiwan shipped US$317.7 billion worth of goods around the globe in 2017
- Electrical machinery, equipment: US$141.5 billion (44.5% of total exports)
- Machinery including computers: $36.6 billion (11.5%)
- Plastics, plastic articles: $20.3 billion (6.4%)
- Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $16.4 billion (5.2%)
- Mineral fuels including oil: $10.9 billion (3.4%)
- Vehicles: $9.7 billion (3.1%)
- Iron, steel: $9.7 billion (3%)
- Organic chemicals: $9.6 billion (3.0%)
- Articles of iron or steel: $7.7 billion (2.4%)
- Copper: $4.7 billion (1.5%)
If Taiwan can do this or Vietnam, why not Pakistan?
You require extremely good education system to reach where Taiwan or Vietnam are standing..
1 - You need to redesign the syllabus from Grade 1 to Masters degrees.. Take out regional languages, introduce computer and ethical subjects from primary. Introduce statistics and economics from grade 9. Ethical education is a must till grade 12.
2 - You need 100% children completing high school..
3 - You need a lot of technical education institutes.. and technical education syllabus should be in line with the current demand..
4 - You require many more research universities... with state of the art facilities and good professors
5 - You require cheap renewable energy, a lot of it.. which you could supply to the industries at the cheapest rates in the region.
6 - You require peace and security.. for that you will have to do reforms in police, and other related institutions..
If today you achieve all of the above, it will require at least 16-18 years from today to get the results.. (when the new generation will get qualified after going through the above rigorous education system/ testing.
When you will have high quality engineers and technical workers available in the market, together with security and cheap energy, a lot of foreign electronics/ mechanical industries will invest in your country.. They always look for such markets, where they can find excellent technical resources, and cheap energy.. and of course... security.. This will increase your exports many folds..
People who will not find jobs in the country, will be hired by foreign countries on better pay scales.. This will increase your foreign currency remittances.. Overall, you will have plenty of dollars (or Chines Yuan in the coming years) to spend on many other sectors, such as healthcare, infrastructure, and transportation etc.. and you will eventually enter the league of first world country in the next 15-20 years..
I often hear this bloated brag even from PDF members. The reality is 200 million people export/import nearly $80 billion and most of that goes through Karachi Port. Lot of the national trading concerns have their HQs in Karachi. For instance PIA is used by all of Pakistan. Ditto Steel Mills. Just because they are based their does not mean Karachi generates the tax revenue. The tax % is of trade carried across the entire country. If I buy a car from Islamabad and it is imported through Karachi Port the % tax will collected at point of entry. That does not mean Karachi generated the revenue. The best way to see which city or region is contributing is by looking at the exports. As you said most are agri based grown across the farming country of Pakistan. Karachi is merely a transit hub. The only city that impresses me is Sialkot as clearly despite being small it generates huge amount of exports - leather, sports, surgical etc.
A substantial chunk of Sindh’s GDP is attributed to Karachi
[9][10] (the GDP of Sindh as a percentage of Pakistan’s total GDP has traditionally hovered around 29%/30%).
[9][10][11][12] Karachi’s GDP is around 20% of the total GDP of Pakistan.
[4][5] A
PricewaterhouseCoopers study released in 2009, which surveyed the
2008 GDP of the top cities in the world, calculated Karachi’s GDP (PPP) to be $113 billion as of 2014
[13] It confirmed Karachi’s status as Pakistan’s largest economy, well ahead of the next two biggest cities
Lahore and
Faisalabad, which had a reported GDP (PPP) in 2008 of $40 billion and $14 billion, respectively.
[1] (projected to be $193 billion in 2025 at a growth rate of 5.5%).
[1]> Karachi's high GDP is based on its large industrial base, with a high dependency also on the financial services sector. Textiles, cement, steel, heavy machinery, chemicals, food, banking and insurance are the major industrial sectors contributing to Karachi's GDP.