Billions of dollars fly away via optic fiber

Economic Survey 2009-10 has been released by the Government of Pakistan. It shows economic performance during the year ending June, 2010. The situation reported in the Survey is dismal and it is far too disappointing as compared with the situation of period 2000-07.

The alarming news is that during the year, capital over $600 million invested in telecommunication sector has flown back to where it had come from. This is really bad news because Government of the past had banked on the FDI in this sector. Major reason could be utter failure of Telecommunication De-regulation Policy, 2003 which was formulated by PTCL and was naturally PTCL-centric. In spite of privatization of PTCL, Pakistan created a total monopolized market and the private sector licensees had to flee along with capital. This happened due to flawed deregulation and half-hearted implementations of the Policy by the previous government. The present government has not to be blamed for this. 

Foreign investment of over one billion dollars made in telecommunication and financial services seems to have flown away at the speed of light-via optic fiber.

Other major achievements on economic front are as under:

·        The economic survey shows a decline in growth in the agriculture sector in 2010 at 2 percent from almost 4 percent last year.

·        The Crops sector declined by 0.4 percent, while livestock rose by 4 percent.

·        Industrial output expanded by almost 5 percent, where Large Scale Manufacturing grew 4.4 percent and Services grew 4.6 percent, compared to 1.6 percent in 2009.

·        The bulk of the flight of foreign investment took place from Telecom (over $600 million) and Financial Services sector (over $500 million).

·        The finance ministry says in the survey that inflation at home rose mainly due to the rising international commodity prices.

·        Major factor for the crisis was the global recession, which had a strong impact on the domestic markets.