By Abdul Rehman Patel
Some nations do not merely cover distance. They define their decisions. And when decisions become blurred, the paths themselves begin to disappear. This is not a metaphor pulled from some philosophical manual. It is the quiet truth of what has happened to Pakistan’s economy over the past two decades. You do not need long speeches or elaborate white papers to understand where a country stands. Two numbers will do: gross domestic product and the poverty rate. And right now, both are telling a story that no Pakistani prime minister would want to read aloud. Recent global reports from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have drawn a line across the map.
On one side, nations climbing the ladder of productivity and human development. On the other, those still trapped in the basement of deprivation. Among the countries with the highest poverty rates, Pakistan now finds itself listed alongside Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Let that sink in for a moment. Afghanistan has known nothing but war for generations. Sudan has been torn apart by internal conflict and famine. The Congo remains a byword for instability and resource-driven violence. But Pakistan? Here the state exists. Institutions exist. A reasonably functioning bureaucracy exists. Natural resources exist. A young, ambitious population exists. And yet the economic direction remains so profoundly unclear that it has become a kind of directionlessness in itself.
Look at the region, and the picture sharpens into something almost painful to hold. India’s economy is now approximately $3.9 trillion. Bangladesh, which in 1971 was dismissed by Pakistani military rulers as a perpetual basket case, has crossed $450 billion. Pakistan lags at roughly $370 billion. On per capita income, the gap is even more humbling. India stands at over $2,600 per person. Bangladesh at over $2,500. Pakistan hovers somewhere between $1,400 and $1,500. These are not mere statistics. They are the difference between a family that can afford school fees and medicine, and a family that must choose. They are the difference between a teenager who dreams of coding and one who dreams of leaving.
However, the real pressure on Pakistani households and factories comes from something more visceral than GDP tables. It comes from cost. In recent weeks, petrol prices jumped by nearly twenty-seven rupees per liter, pushing the pump price close to three hundred and ninety-three rupees. In India, the same liter costs roughly one hundred and four rupees. In Bangladesh, around one hundred and thirty-five to one hundred and forty taka. This is not an accident of geography. It is the result of taxation, subsidy mismanagement, currency depreciation and a complete failure to rationalize energy pricing. When your inputs are three times more expensive than your neighbors’, you cannot compete. It is that simple. No factory owner in Lahore can pay Pakistani petrol prices and Indian electricity tariffs simultaneously and still stay afloat.
Electricity, that invisible wound, tells the same story. In Pakistan, industrial power can cost between fifty and sixty rupees per unit. In India, the comparable rate is fifteen to twenty-five rupees. In Bangladesh, twelve to twenty rupees. This is where economies break quietly, without any single dramatic collapse. Factories reduce shifts. Then they reduce workers. Then they shut down altogether. Exports stagnate. Foreign investors look elsewhere. And the people who once stitched shirts or assembled electrical goods end up driving rickshaws or selling tea. There is nothing wrong with driving a rickshaw or selling tea. But a country cannot build a middle class that way.
So where did the difference begin? Bangladesh made a conscious choice, decades ago, to bet on garments, on female workforce participation, on labor-intensive exports, on consistency of policy. India, for all its democratic chaos, built scale through information technology, business process outsourcing, digital public infrastructure and a service economy that now powers global supply chains. Pakistan, by contrast, changed policies the way some people change shirts. One government favored textiles. The next favored real estate. One prime minister talked about dams. The next talked about Chinese infrastructure corridors. There was no through line, no steady hand on the tiller. And the economy responded accordingly: by drifting.
If Pakistan is to break out of this cycle, exports must become a true national priority, not a slogan for opposition rallies. Energy pricing must be aligned with industrial competitiveness, not with the fiscal convenience of the moment. Bangladesh turned itself around not because it discovered oil or gold, but because it decided to focus. Pakistan can do the same. But the window will not stay open forever. If current trends continue, Bangladesh will move further ahead, Pakistan’s exports will remain stagnant, and poverty will tighten its grip rather than loosen it. Alternatively, if the direction is corrected now, with honesty and discipline, Pakistan can still stage a meaningful comeback within the next decade.
(The Pakistani-origin American writer and columnist, sheds light on various social and political issues, can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
