Saudi Arabia is perhaps one country in the whole world which has been coming to Pakistan’s economic aid every time this country was in a dire need of such help. Even otherwise, the Kingdom has been over generous with its regular hand-outs.
And it has also been very generous in providing job opportunities to Pakistanis in the Kingdom. In fact a good part of overseas remittances come from Saudi Arabia as over a million Pakistanis are working in the Kingdom.
But that is perhaps all there is to the economic relations between the two countries. There is no substantial Saudi investment in Pakistan nor have our investors gone to the Kingdom in good numbers, though the opportunities there are immense. Even the trade between the two countries has never risen beyond a limited amount and that too mostly earnings from items in demand among the Pakistanis working there. And in recent years even the demand for Pakistani workers has dwindled greatly.
The case of Pakistan-Saudi Arabia economic relations is being discussed here only to show the attitude of our official economic managers who do not seem to miss even a single opportunity to seek dole from wherever they could but when it comes to developing mutually beneficial bilateral economic relations on equal footing with even countries like Saudi Arabia they are found dragging their feet.
The main reason why exports to Saudi Arabia are stagnating is said to be the high incidence of fraudulent practices that are employed by our exporters. The first consignment would carry perhaps the best quality rice,but the very next would contain a commodity not of required specification.
In the case of manpower export, the situation is even more scandalous. If the request is for drivers we send cooks from here and in place of cooks, drivers have landed in the Kingdom. Indeed, manpower export agencies, mostly in the private sector in collusion with the officials of the labour ministry have given a very bad name to Pakistan in the international manpower market. Pakistani recruiting agencies have their collaborators in every country and the two together milk those looking for greener pastures and then they are abandoned to be picked up by local police or shot dead trying to cross borders. If the ownership of most of these domestic recruiting agencies is traced then you will find a member of the ruling elite at the head of each of these organization. At times, they employ front-men apparently having no links with the real owners. This is the reason why even the all powerful NAB operating with its far reaching tentacles has failed to bring these recruiting agencies to book.
The other day I had a chance meeting with Saudi Arabian Ambassador Ali F Awadh Asseri. He believes that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia could develop more meaningful bilateral economic relations than the two countries now enjoy. He said given political and investment security, Pakistan remained a good place for investment. At the same time, Pakistani businessmen should also invest in Saudi Arabia where new clauses, he said, have been introduced to facilitate such overseas investments.
“ The prospects of establishing joint ventures should also be looked into,” he added.To facilitate the same,he said, there should be more frequent exchange of trade delegations, more single country exhibitions. The question of the Pakistani labour force working in Saudi Arabia is another important issue that we need to look into, he said.” What we need in Saudi Arabia is skilled labour and professionals. Unfortunately, in the absence of the same, skilled labour is being imported from other countries.”
He said the number of Pakistanis working in the Kingdom could increase considerably only if ‘mal-practices afflicting the export of labour from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia could, somehow, be controlled.” He complained of innumerable instances of forged documents and said such practices have to be stopped.
It is not only Saudi Arabia which is being ignored by our official economic managers. Other Muslim countries like UAE, Turkey, Malaysia, etc, too are being treated in the same way.
The new Minister for Investment and Privatization, Dr. Hafeez Shiekh, and his team made up of the chairman of the Board of Investment (BOI), Waseem Haqqi, and his secretary, Shuja Shah, perhaps mindful of these neglected aspects of Pakistan’s bilateral economic relations with many Muslim countries organized an investment conference participated exclusively by investors from OIC countries. It was an innovative idea.
Investment conferences for foreign investors should always be held in Pakistan, not outside. When you hold such conferences in your country and at a place where all the relevant ministries, departments and other such organizations which get involved in processing investment applications are located, you are providing the foreign investor participating in the conference with an opportunity to make on the spot test of the claims being made by host country officials vis-a-vis ‘investment opportunities’ in their country and the facilities available for establishing profitable ventures.
It would also help if at the site of the investors’
conference, small cubicles are set up for each ministry or department which process investment applications and real life demonstrations are given to the guests one by one so that both the investor and the host country officials understand each other’s requirements, their limitations and their respective strong points.
And while negotiating for investments from individual investors on the side-lines of such conferences, the officials try to conserve their resources and make the most of the short time available by first finding out the comparative advantages of each guest and then keeping the focus of negotiations on these points.Care should also be taken to avoid as much as possible making claims which cannot be backed by on-ground realities.