The year 2001 ended without private sector’s investment picking up. This is causing the foreign investors staying away from taking part in any meaningful development activity, notwithstanding the rhetoric that investments flowing into the oil and gas sector of the country.

Despite the government’s assurance that continuity and consistency in economic policies will persist, the private sector is largely on one pretext or the other. The marked rupee appreciation viz a viz dollar is also not doing the trick to lure the private sector.

The element of uncertainty remains one of the major obstacles to private sector investment, specially after the September 11 events that brought a world-wide slowing-down in the economies accentuating the recessionary trends. The private sector is inhibited by the fact that they do not know how things will work after the elections due in October and the formation of the elected government.

President General Pervez Musharraf has been assuring ever since he came into power in October 1999 that all economic policies and reforms that he would undertake would be fully protected. He was firm on this point in his inaugural address to the Pakistan Human Development Forum last that when he said that nobody would be allowed to reverse the reforms and the restructuring that were currently being undertaken and that the private and foreign investors should benefit from what he termed his liberal and profit-yielding policies.

But the fact remains that the investment is not coming and the people are perhaps still looking for more conducive environment and more concessions.

One thing in which the successive governments failed is the inability to provide the-much-talked-about one-window operation. The investors generally complain of endless delays and can be spotted almost daily in the ministries of finance, commerce, production and industries as well as in the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) begging the concerned officials to help provide various utilities to set up their new industries.

The delay in providing required facilities, specially water, electricity and telephones has been the major cause of not having increased private sector activity.

When top businessmen met the president a few days ago in Islamabad, they also complained about the issue, General Mushrraf Pervez reportedly showed concern and directed the concerned officials to immediately take notice and meet all basic requirements of the investors.

The element of corruption in line departments has also been cited a major reason to have any meaningful private sector investment. The issue does not end here as the new investors specially overseas Pakistanis, are given so much tough time that they invariably get disillusioned and decide to go back disenchanted. There are reports that some of the prominent overseas Pakistanis have started preferring to set up their industries in UAE, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc.

This is a very unfortunate situation specially when the commercial banks are saying that they have adequate capital for new entrepreneurs and that they are ready for credit expansion. Many people also complain that role of the Board of Investment (BOI) has not been effective in helping to set up new businesses.

The Board’s job perhaps is only to prepare beautiful leaflets and other materials specifying various fields of new investment. But practically it is not helping as many investors complain. The BoI is supposed to help provide this one window particularly to the foreign investors but the situation on the ground suggests that things are in pretty bad shape and not helping at all.

According to International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank, there are still over 30 steps which need to be covered by any investor to have his industry in place. The government claims that it has reduced the number of laws, rules and regulations to help attract private investment.

Since there is a world-wide opposition against black money and new banking laws have been framed specially by the US, European countries, and in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there exits more opportunities to invest in Pakistan by Pakistanis whether they live here or abroad.

The hundi and hawala systems have received a big blow due to depreciation of the dollar and the holders of black money feel forced to remit their money through normal banking channels. But still they are not considering to invest and the million dollar question is why. The people at the helm of the affairs need to ponder over the issue so that local and foreign investment could be made possible.

“What Musharraf has said in the inaugural session to the Human Development Forum is sufficient to believe that there will be a continuity of polices. Therefore investors should come forward and invest in the country”, said a prominent foreign participant of the Forum.

He said that international donors were trying to help and help genuinely to improve Pakistan’s economy in a big way. “But while I expect the local and foreign investors to go for new investment in Pakistan, I would also expect the government to remove genuine problems of the investors and provide them a real one-window to help set up their new businesses”, he added.