FINALLY, Pakistan has been included in emerging markets list where macro-economic and financial data of 27 countries is produced and published by The Economist, London every week. Pakistan’s name started appearing in the list since last month.

The listing was announced by economics editor of the magazine Pam Woodall at the conference on “Doing business with Pakistan,” organized by Economist Conferences in London on February 22. She co-chaired this half-day conference with editor of EIU reports on Pakistan and India, Ravi Bhatia.

A profile of Pakistan’s economic reform agenda and growth record by Ravi Bhatia served as a good testimonial for the multinationals. Ravi also talked about the challenges posed by high oil prices, rising inflation and poverty.

Pam raised the issue of prompt availability of up-to-date economic data. Some of the important figures of interest to investors and journalists are quarterly GDP rate and the provincial share in the GDP with provincial growth rates. The finance ministry says that quarterly GDP growth rates would be available soon. But there would be no authentic word on provincial GDP figures.

Another common question of foreign investors and journalists is that how reliable these figures are? One view is that when it comes to basic magic figure of GDP growth, it is under-stated like in most developing countries where a large chunk of the economy remains unreported.

Perhaps, that is the reason that government is trying to revamp the Federal Bureau of Statistics. It is to be made autonomous.

Coming back to the conference, the participants were concerned about the growing current account deficit mainly caused by the yawning trade gap. But the keynote speaker and PM’s Finance and Economic Affairs advisor, Dr Salman Shah addressed these concerns in a presentation on Pakistan’s economy and its future. It included an interesting slide on foreign exchange cash flows; inflows estimated at $8779 billion exceeding the outflow of $6591 billion to close the year with a surplus of $2188 billion.

An important source of capital inflows is privatization which was covered by Secretary Privatization Tahsin Iqbal Khan. There is little realization in the West that Pakistan is the biggest success story of privatisation in this region.

No doubt, the big-ticket sale items will help manage the surging import bill for the next few years. The question arises what would happen when privatization proceeds would not be available?

Dr Shah’s view was that much of the increase in the import bill was related to increase in the import of machinery which would boost industrial production and exports.

On long-term basis, the official strategy is to curtail high-energy cost, remove water shortages to raise agricultural production, improve logistics and remove supply chain constraints, unlock the land bank and continue with the governance reform.

Dwelling on banking reforms, Habib Bank President Zakir Mehmood said financial performance of the bank has improved. The ratio of non-performing bank loans has dropped from seven to 0.5 per cent of the GDP. The interest rates have fallen compared to pre-reform area and now 80 per cent of the banking sector is in the hands of private sector. This has unleashed competition in the banking sector to the benefit of the consumers.

JP Morgan Country Head Reza Rahim told the participants that Pakistan is one of fastest growing cellular market of the world. Around one million new connections are being sold every month. According to one estimate, Pakistan has over one billion dollar cell phones market – a figure that could attract market leaders towards manufacturing.