The return of industrial policy

Industrialization is back on the policy agenda in Pakistan. The government is about to announce a new national industrial policy aimed at ‘reshaping and reviving’ Pakistan’s long-stagnant industrial sector. This comes amid a slew of other policies approved or in development aimed at boosting industrial and export growth, including a new National Tariff Policy, a National Electric Vehicles Policy, a Textiles and Apparel policy, and a new Energy Wheeling policy among others, as well as the launch of the second phase of CPEC (which includes industrial development as a key priority).

Jaded observers of Pakistani policymaking can be forgiven for shrugging their shoulders at these developments given the sordid history of past top-down reform attempts by successive governments that amounted to little beyond fanfare, boom-bust cycles and rapid backtracking on reform commitments at the slightest hint of sectional resistance. However, regardless of how one feels about the current government’s capabilities or legitimacy to design and implement industrial policy, it is hard to argue that this exercise is unnecessary.