|
Once
again I am returning from Pakistan to LA after a successful
trip. I now travel to Pakistan
a few times a year. I am never disappointed with the progress
I see, and I wonder where the negative articles about Pakistan
come from. This time I came as a Corporate Board
member of US Pakistan Business Council (www.uspakistan.org)
with a fifteen member high level US Business Delegation
to Islamabad. High level is really an understatement for
this delegation because of the total market capitalization
of this group exceeded one trillion dollars (Yes, one trillion
with a “t”).
The
Delegation included executives like Ahmet Bozer of Coca-Cola,
Kursat Ozkan of General Electric, Stephen Du Mont & Richard
Mach of Cisco, Hassan Tavakoli of Motorola, Mohammed Ghafari
of Lucent, Nigel Thompson of Merck Co, Robert Riordan of
Black & Veatch, Norman Collins of Citigroup, Edward
Jackson of Sweetwater Int’l, and Tom Slone of Touchstone
(a recent IT-Call Center-BPO success story in Islamabad
I have followed). Pakistani Americans in the delegation
included Shoaib Kothawala of Hometex, Rafat Mahmood of
Mahmood Investment, Mohammed Tahir of United American Lines,
and myself, Pervaiz Lodhie of LEDtronics. Most of us in
the delegation are members of the USPBC.
Five
years of hard work by the top Pakistani leadership and
placement of a good management
team is starting to pay fast dividends. All key economic
and fundamental indicators show goals are being achieved
faster than set time limits. Though twenty years late,
if this progress pace continues there is no doubt that
Pakistan will be the Asian Tiger of the near future.
There
is a major shortage of hotels in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad
at this time, but several new hotels are currently being
built. The day our delegation started arriving on March
14th at Serena Hotel Islamabad, Islamabad was
being visited by the world’s fourth richest man,
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia,
who is investing heavily in Pakistan. There were high-level
delegations from Malaysia, Europe, Central Asian Countries
and other Middle East countries. The only foreign investors
clearly missing from this center of the region that will
be the highest growth region of the world are investors
from The United States of America. Middle Eastern, European,
and South Asian companies and investor groups are quickly
grabbing the major government entities being privatized
in Pakistan.
American
administration’s selective overreaction towards Muslims
around the world after the tragedy of “9/11” and
subsequent uncalled for invasion of the sovereign Muslim
nation of Iraq is turning global economies and new money
away from America. The signs are becoming more and more
clear that America may not be the engine of the world economy
of tomorrow. I made this
statement couple of years ago. I now read articles in Newsweek,
U.S. News stating if America will remain No.1 in future.
It will very likely be South Asia, which includes Pakistan.
The goal of our fifteen member high level USPBC business
delegation was to work towards encouraging foreign
direct investment opportunities into Pakistan and improve
bilateral investment climate between USA and Pakistan.
The strong travel advisory on visiting Pakistan by the
U.S. State department and the insurance company’s
cancellations of insurance policies of those that travel
to Pakistan have done more harm than good. Fortunately,
multi-national companies in the US, like Coca-Cola, GE,
Cisco, Motorola, Lucent and many others, are taking the
lead, and making their own decisions to travel to Pakistan
regardless of any travel advisories.
The
US Chamber of Commerce/USBPC
delegation met Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Senate
Chairman Mohammad Mian Soomro, Foreign Minister Khurshid
Kasuri, Privatization Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Information
Technology Minister Awais Ahmad
Khan Leghari, Minister of State Umar Ahmad Ghuman,
and Commerce Secretary Tasneem Noorani. The business delegation
repeated the same message at all meetings: “Many
good stories are taking place in Pakistan. The reality
of Pakistan is lot more positive than the perception being
created in the West. How can the USPBC help in telling
the true story of Pakistan in the West and turn the wrong
perception around?” The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan
Ryan Crocker was not only a great host to our delegation,
but truly committed to helping improve the relationship
of USA and Pakistan in all sectors.
There
is still a lot of work to be done in Pakistan; all is not
perfect. Fifty years of country’s rape and gross
miss-management by few cannot be fully fixed in five years
except by some magic. There are a few politicians, a few
bureaucrats, and a few chairmen that are not helping the
country. They are bad listeners, and they are arrogant “mister-know-it-alls.” A
statement was made to me in passing that, “We don’t
care if America comes or not. We are doing great on our
own.” Such remarks are uncalled for. For the first
time Pakistan is showing poverty reduction in the urban
areas. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MGD)
and the World Bank are looking for poverty reduction in
the rural poor masses in the 1000’s of villages of
Pakistan. Only the poverty increase has now been arrested
in the rural poor by collective efforts of many NGO’s.
The revolutionary poverty alleviation program of National
Commission on Human Development (NCHD) and Pakistan Human
Development Fund (PHDF) is making major progress in bringing
universal primary education and primary health to the most
rural villages through volunteering. As one of the active
founding directors of NCHD/PHDF, I will be writing a report
on their successes and
achievements.
Other
critical problems that need to be addressed include law
and order, corruption, health care, and education. The
Transparency International shows that corruption index
went up twenty percent in 2004 after declining for four years.
This may be due to reduced government focus on corruption.
This sudden increase in corruption index should be immediately
analyzed, and appropriate, corrective actions should be
taken.
Pakistan
can become a model country by both individual and collective
efforts by all Pakistanis and Pakistani expatriates around
the world. Pakistan has a very large number of financially
successful individuals and corporations that need to participate
in moving Pakistan forward. Together, Inshallah, Pakistan
will be a proud nation. |
