in 2006, Chile’s Antofagasta acquired the Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) for $167 million. TCC was the joint venture company set up to explore the Reko Diq, also considered to be Balochistan’s El Dorado. Now contrast that with the $5.9 billion penalty imposed as damages by the World Bank’s arbitration court on Pakistan. This staggering sum was imposed for a project that never followed through, as it fell victim to an unaccountable wave of judicial activism.

Often the decisions and their implications for the people of Pakistan are a fait accompli, yet in retrospect one wonders when institutions will be held accountable. This case not only raises questions about the fragile foundations of the international legal frameworks Pakistan so readily submits to but also raises uncomfortable questions about the development agendas pushed by foreign donors and multilaterals on the legislative side. Enter legislative activism.

This influence is hardly limited to infrastructure or resource projects. In 2019, the International Monetary Fund conditioned its $6bn bailout on the basis of the State Bank of Pakistan gaining autonomy. By pushing for changes in SBP Amendment Bill 2021, the influence of multilaterals stretched into the legislature. Albeit a necessary step taken to curb government spending and support sustainable growth, it was an example of how our elected policymakers in the parliament helplessly succumbed to legislation being dictated by multilaterals.

Seemingly, even technical urban service reforms carry similar imprints. The World Bank-funded Karachi Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project, fully financed under Bank standards, eventually prompted new legislation in 2023. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation Act, passed by the Sindh Assembly, established an independent, technocrat-led board of directors and created a dedicated Water and Sewerage Fund – both structural reforms aligned with donor frameworks rather than organically developed through local policymaking processes.

When a nation is economically weak, it has to increase its dependence on international donors and multilaterals that wind up influencing policy-making efforts

Marred in controversy because it lacked the coherence and input from local stakeholders, the law was challenged in the Sindh High Court and is currently in the doldrums, posing a big question mark over the utility of such legislation and the time, energy and resources being wasted by the legislature.

The buck doesn’t stop here; the Sindh Promotion & Protection of Breastfeeding Act 2023 is another example of a similar yet futile legislative exercise. Even though a federal law of 2002 and a provincial law of 2013 already exist on the subject, a new law in 2023 was pushed, with an underscored inclusion of the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organisation in the oversight board, in contrast to their exclusion in the 2013 law, that the Act mandated, again leaving clear imprints of multilateral donor entities.

On the other hand, locally operated non-governmental organisations (NGOs) getting funding from international donors have started knocking on the doors of parliamentarians seeking tax-related legislation on a myriad of local industry players. An example is the hiked federal excise duty (FED) on beverages and discussion of new taxes and labelling regulations on food items, which is being mobilised by a broad coalition of health NGOs, medical associations, media, and policy experts.

The success of this effort translated into the 2023 Supplementary Finance Bill, where the FED on beverages was bumped to 20pc in addition to the 18pc general sales tax. While the organisation extended its outreach to policymakers under the guise of its health impact, there was and yet is no clear research that links to the rationale that the burden of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, is solely due to the consumption of food alone and not the lifestyle or poor dietary habits of the general population.

The onus here does not lie on multilateral donors or local and international non-governmental organisations, but on our domestic lawmakers in the corridors of power. Those seated in our legislature have developed a herd mentality and seem to head in the direction of the populist narrative, without objectively assessing the implications of voting for laws that could potentially have a long-term impact.

Questions also arise about the utility of such exercises, especially when reforms needed to institutionally strengthen the bodies that implement and enforce such laws are perpetually absent.

Pakistan has a long history of passing laws but never really implementing them. Laws related to women’s rights are well in place, yet Pakistan ranks awfully in indicators related to violent crimes against women. It is often a question in discourses related to public policy about the utility of passing legislation when, in effect, frameworks to implement them do not exist.

It all boils down to one thing: when a nation is economically weak, it has to increase its dependence on international donors and multilaterals, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Most international support comes with strings attached, and these strings are often legislative in nature. This begs the question: are our policy makers as adept as they should be, and do they actually have the foresight to understand the long-term impact of creating policy frameworks at the dictation of multilateral bodies?

The writer is an economics student at LUMS and can be reached at efaaman7@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 6th, 2025