Pakistan’s Trade and Investment Environment: 1972 to 2010

Abstract

Trade and investment are two important sectors for macroeconomic development. The healthy trends in these sectors ensure the refined economic development in any country. However, in case of Pakistan, the situation of both trade and investment is very dilemmatic in nature. There are numerous factors for the low economic growth of country, which needs to be point out, in order to avoid the mistakes in future economic policymaking. Additionally, the researcher believed that it is also necessary to explain the historical trends of both sectors, which is necessary to trace the causes of persistent issues related to both sectors. The study is largely based on literature review, to describe the historical trade and investments trends in Pakistan’s economy. The first section specifically deals with trade environment which has further divided into sub-sections. Those sections describe the history of trade environment since the beginning of 1970s to present, trade markets of Pakistan, and issue of trade liberalization. The second section is about the investment sector which elucidates the foreign direct investment, domestic investment. The study covers both public and private investment; and explores reasons why it remained low. The study also attempts to explain the interaction between trade and investment and their combine prospects for the macro-economic growth in Pakistan.