Abstract
Over the last few years, the Pakistani economy has faced a variety of challenges which has led economic managers to focus more on immediate problems at the expense of long term structural issues. The purpose of the Lahore School’s Tenth Annual Conference on the Management of the Pakistan Economy was to help policy makers take a step back and look at some of the critical issues that Pakistan needs to face if it is to achieve growth in the medium to long term. Thus the central theme of the conference was ‘Pakistan in the Global Economy – Opportunities and Challenges’ and a range of key structural issues was discussed by a variety of experts. What made the conference unique was that many of these issues have not been discussed and debated thoroughly before in the Pakistani context. Some of the highlights of the conference were Asma Khalid’s (from the State Bank of Pakistan) extremely insightful analysis of the parallel foreign exchange market in Pakistan (which has not been analyzed in depth before) as well as the call by many of the presenters for a well-formulated industrial policy in Pakistan. Similarly, the conference also focused on some key export sectors (such as garments) as well as strategies for improving Pakistan’s export competitiveness and diversifying exports. Finally, some of the participants noted that in a rush to access new markets, Pakistan must tread carefully when agreeing to trade agreements with potentially large trading partners. As Pakistani policy makers sit and decide on economic strategies, it is absolutely critical that they pay very close attention to these issues.
Keywords
Pakistan, economy, Pakistan, policy