HASSAN ABBAS

LAHORE: Lahore School of Economics Rector Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry on Wednesday called for making short-term policies for reviving economy before the elections.

The Rector was addressing the opening session of the 14th International Conference on the Management of Pakistan Economy. The theme of this year's conference is "Accelerating Economic Growth in Pakistan: Key Macro and Sectoral Drivers".

He also called for evolving a system to reduce tax leakages and restructuring the tax collection system of the country. He said they could take the full benefits of opportunities of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) only when their local industry worked jointly with the Chinese industry.

He said the objective of organising the conference was to address the challenges faced by Pakistan's economy. He also said the two-day event would include scholarly discourse on key macro and sectoral drivers of economic growth that would generate insights on the short run initiatives as well as structural and institutional measures designed to boost long-run economic growth in Pakistan.

Dr Shahid said papers presented on day one of the conference would provide the analytical basis for addressing burning issues faced by the country based on rigorous research on macroeconomic stability, poverty and CPEC. On the second day, papers would be presented on industrial strategy, role of trade policy innovation and agriculture sector, he said.

Former Economic Advisor Ministry of Finance government of Pakistan Sakib Sherani discussed causes of country's declining exports. He suggested that exchange rate flexibility was a viable policy tool to enhance exports.

Professor of Economics and Director, Graduate Institute of Development Studies LSE Dr Rashid Amjad presented his paper Regaining "Macroeconomic Balance: Breaking out Of Pakistan's Impossible Trinity" in which he discussed challenge of maintaining a balance between the fiscal deficit, the rate of economic growth and the external account deficit.

In his paper he identified policy measures needed in the short, medium and long term for Pakistan to break out of the impossible trinity and to move to a sustainable and higher growth path. He said country's economic managers face the challenge of balancing the current fiscal deficit and maintaining a fixed exchange rate and achieving a rising economic growth rate.

Assistant Director State Bank of Pakistan Almazia Shahzad in her presentation titled "Capital Account Liberlisation and Development in Pakistan" talked about Pakistan's experience of capital account liberalization and tries to assess how it has affected country's economic performance. The paper identifies the substantial share of external debt, insufficient reforms in domestic financial sector and impact of capital flows through informal channels of money transfer as the probable reason for this outcome.

Dr Moazam Mahmood and Aimal Tanvir in their paper 'The Macro Determinants of Poverty in Pakistan' matched some macro variables with the long run poverty trends.

Dr Nasir Iqbal Director Research at the Benazir Income Support Program presented his co-authored work with Dr Saima Nawaz Assistant Professor COMSATS titled "Social Safety Net Programme - BISP in Pakistan: Effectiveness, Challenges and Future Agenda". The paper focused on impact assessment of cash transfers (CT) programs on poverty, education, health and productive assets. The paper evaluated the performance of BISP with reference to other renowned social safety nets in the world. The authors also explored the future plans of BISP in the light of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 agenda by utilizing desk review of impact evaluation and annual reports, payment and enrollment data, National Socio Economic Registry (NSER) and a structured questionnaire.

Dr Ahmed M Khalid Professor of Economics, University Brunei Darussalam talked on "Informal Economy; Size (sectorial distribution), Trends and Implications for Growth".

He said his study provided a detailed review of the existing empirical literature on the subject of informal economy, especially in the context of Pakistan.

Dr Matthew McCartney, Director of Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme, Associate Professor in the Political Economy and Human Development of India talked with reference to his study "The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): Considering contemporary Pakistan through old-fashioned Economics and historical case studies".

He said "his paper looks in detail at the $46 billion CPEC package of transport, energy and manufacturing projects and asks how we can analyse the impact of a transformative expansion of infrastructure. The paper argues that traditional methods based on social saving are inadequate for such an evaluation. Instead this paper uses the theoretical frameworks of the 'Leading Sector' and 'Unbalanced Growth' and the historical case studies of transformative infrastructure expansion in nineteenth century United States, Mexico, Germany and India to explore the conditions under which the CPEC could promote sustainable long-run economic development in contemporary Pakistan."

Dr Sirimal Abeyratne, Professor in Economics at University of Colombo, presented his work titled "Managing Development with Chinese Investment: The Case of Sri Lanka". The paper argues that, in spite of popular rhetoric, the management of the internal economic affairs with policy and regulatory reforms has been in the heart of the issue, which needs to be addressed for improving the economic and political capacity to benefit from the country's locational advantage and emerging opportunities.

Dr Rajah Rasiah Professor of International Development at the Asia Europe Institute, University of Malaya presented his study "How can Pakistan Benefit from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor" co-authored with Shujaat Mubarik and Nazia Nazeer.

The paper discussed in detail the standard trade measures to examine the trends, and to assess the potential impact the highways connecting the Arabian Sea with the Chinese border in the North of Pakistan, and the industrial zones to be developed. The author concluded that while the immediate impact of CPEC is likely to deepen the existing asymmetric trade patterns between the two countries tilting further towards China, this paper focuses on how Pakistan can strategize its role in the relationship to appropriate greater economic synergies.

Khalil Hamdani Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of Development Study LSE and Former Director, UNCTAD) presented his paper titled "Maximizing the Impact of Chinese Investment in Pakistan".

In his discussion he talked about how Pakistan, Chinese investment can accelerate economic growth in four ways. He said that increased capital inflows will ease macroeconomic management and the balance of payments. Second, the infusion of investment and technology into infrastructure development will catalyse key productive sectors.

Third, vibrant economic activity would attract investment from other countries, provided domestic investors lead the way. The main finding of the paper hints that the impact of Chinese investment for the Pakistan economy will be positive, and could be substantial with a comprehensive and sustained policy effort.

The second paper of the session entitled "Special Economic Zones (SEZs): A Comparative Analysis for CPEC SEZs in Pakistan" was presented by Cui Yong (Professor at Jiangsu University). The paper was co-authored with Muhammad Muzammil Zia, Hasnain Javed and Beenash Afzal Malik. The study investigated the assessment of socio-economic impacts of various Special economic zones SEZs in diverse regions via comparative analysis. The analysis indicates that overall, African SEZs have not led to significant job creation or poverty reduction because of failures in implementing proper regulations. However, Asian SEZs on the other hand, have shown many socio- economic benefits. The paper established that to underpin co-opt African experiences with SEZs in order to improve the Asian framework for the same zone-type setup as Pakistan.

Mahmood Ahmad visiting researcher at Lahore University of Management Sciences presented his paper "Agriculture Development Options under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)" co-authored with Sana Khalid in which he critically evaluated the policies and investment priorities perused in developing CPEC in general and agriculture and agro-industry in particular. The paper also highlighted and identified clusters of agriculture value chains in four corridor zones, especially central zone (Indus Basin) classified under CPEC project that carries good comparative advantage in producing a diversified crop mix that has not been fully exploited. In conclusion the authors mentioned that in order to translate this comparative advantage into competitive advantage, there is not only need to in adopting good global production and trade practices.