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Special Economic Zones in Pakistan: Promises and Perils
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Special Economic Zones in Pakistan
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... Likewise, some socio-economic challenges do create restraints for the CPEC SEZs as well. Such as increasing state debts, declining financial competence of firms, rupee devaluation, and rising trade deficits (Ahmad & Taidong, 2020). These issues raise the question of the sustainability of CPEC SEZs and their aftershocks for Pakistan. ...
OBOR (One Belt One Road) is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world, and CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) is an important component of it. It aims to serve the economic interests of both China and Pakistan by modernizing Pakistan's road, rail, air, and energy transportation systems and linking Pakistan's deep-sea ports of Gwadar and Karachi to China's western borders. It also proposes 9 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to help the local economy integrate with the global economy and industrialize and enhance economic growth. This paper aims to explore the insights of the CPEC and its SEZs and their impacts on the economy and society of Gilgit Baltistan. It will analyze the enhancing urbanization of GB and the existing and upcoming socioeconomic factors that arise due to this transformation. Introduction:
... In the previous two decades, the cement industry has seen some major capacity expansions in anticipation of the country's growing cement demand. The sector's players have recently been encouraged to expand by promising demand prospects from the government of Pakistan initiatives such as the Naya Pakistan Housing Program (NPHP), development of dams, and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) related operations [11]. However, while production of clinker, a significant amount of carbon dioxide emits. ...
Industrialization has though brought comfort to our daily lives, but it has placed a lot of pressure on the planet’s natural resources, subsequently, it has adversely affected the environment. As the need for cement in the construction sector has grown, it has climbed dramatically globally. Around the world, more than 10 billion cubic meters of concrete are produced each year; it is doubtful that this volume will decrease. A significant expected rise in CO2 emissions is caused by increased cement demand. According to the UN Environment Program, buildings are responsible for up to 41% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions. The primary source of greenhouse gases utilized in the manufacturing of cement is clinker. Due to the unsustainable supply of fly ash, calcined clay appears to be a better
Supplemental Cementitious Material (SCMs). Kaolin clay is widely available in Pakistan. The purpose of this investigation is to describe the mineral and thermal characteristics of Pakistani clays by examining their geographic distribution. Clay samples were gathered from 39 different places throughout Pakistan during a field investigation program. X-ray diffraction, X-ray Fluorescence, Reactivity, and thermogravimetric analyses were used to analyze the clay samples’ mineral content and thermal characteristics. This study demonstrates that Pakistan has a substantial amount of kaolin clay reserves close to existing groups of cement plants. Pakistani clays can be utilized as SCM in the production of limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) due to the country’s vast kaolin clay reserves. This study further supports the
viability of producing LC3 in the nation by providing a thorough analysis of the cement business, known deposits of qualifying clay, and the country’s cement production process.
CPEC is a mega investment project, termed as a key to rapid economic growth of Pakistan. It is an economic corridor providing connectivity to China, building around which Pakistan is believed to harness economic dividends as time passes. The project has great strategic significance and it contains enormous economic prospects, thus is vital for both the countries. Though, CPEC is not completed yet, it has already started contributing to Pakistan’s economy as investment in energy projects has increased electricity supplies. CPEC has attracting private sector investment in to Pakistan, which as per official estimates, is expected to boost economic growth rate to 5.5 percent in the near future. While CPEC is a game changer for the development, government needs to pay attention to develop human capital (health, education, trainings and skills) and infrastructure (western route) in order to develop lagging regions and to improve the living standard of people living there.
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a fruitful strategy for promoting trade, employment and economic growth in a county. According to International Labor Organization (ILO) (2010), a tremendous growth in SEZs is observed in last 3 decades. For instance, in 1986, there were 176 SEZs in 47 countries; which reached to 3500 in 130 countries in 2006 (Farole, 2010). The objective of this study is to highlight the potential of SEZs for Pakistan Economy. In particular, we want to find the major causes of failure of the existing SEZs and industrial Estates from the context of organizational inefficiency and governance. There are some industrial estates which were established in Pakistan at provincial level to resolve the problem of sick industry; however, we did not experience much success in that case (Nawaz et al., 2015). There are various models of SEZs across the globe like those of India, Bangladesh, Russia and China. China is one of the success stories as far as the functioning of SEZs is concerned. In this study, we want to have a comparative analysis of Pakistan and China in terms of SEZs and, in this way, we want to discuss how rent-seeking, political influence, information and incentives problems, and other governance issues can lead to the failure of SEZs. Alternatively, in the light of CPEC, we would focus on giving policy options for Pakistan by overcoming these issues.
After being among the earliest countries to embark on the East Asian path, Pakistan fell away but was still among the ten fastest growing economies of the world during 1960–90. However, the seeds for the subsequent economic and technological malaise were also sown in that period. This paper provides an overview of recent theoretical and empirical work on industrial policies – more accurately labeled learning, industrial and technology (LIT) policies – and examines their implications for Pakistan. These include a selective, more sharply focused approach than the comprehensive agendas of reforms that have become common. Substantial islands of success with industrial policies have emerged in a variety of institutional and governance settings, different from those of the original East Asian developmental states. They offer valuable lessons. Raising the abysmally low level of investment in Pakistan is a requirement as well as an outcome and an instrument of industrial policies. This argues for a revival of development finance to stimulate investment as well as to direct it towards selective targets. How to mitigate the risks of this and other instruments of industrial policy to get the risk–reward ratio right is another concern of the paper. An important target of such policies should be the technological upgrading of existing industries. There is enormous scope for doing so, with international comparisons suggesting that Pakistani manufacturing does poorly – both in terms of variance in productivity between firms within an industry as well as in introducing new technologies and products. Whilst the constraints of the politics–governance–security/terrorism nexus are beyond the scope of the paper, their salience cannot be underestimated.
Maps capture data expressing the economic complexity of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe, offering current economic measures and as well as a guide to achieving prosperity
Why do some countries grow and others do not? The authors of The Atlas of Economic Complexity offer readers an explanation based on "Economic Complexity," a measure of a society's productive knowledge. Prosperous societies are those that have the knowledge to make a larger variety of more complex products. The Atlas of Economic Complexity attempts to measure the amount of productive knowledge countries hold and how they can move to accumulate more of it by making more complex products.
Through the graphical representation of the "Product Space," the authors are able to identify each country's "adjacent possible," or potential new products, making it easier to find paths to economic diversification and growth. In addition, they argue that a country's economic complexity and its position in the product space are better predictors of economic growth than many other well-known development indicators, including measures of competitiveness, governance, finance, and schooling.
Using innovative visualizations, the book locates each country in the product space, provides complexity and growth potential rankings for 128 countries, and offers individual country pages with detailed information about a country's current capabilities and its diversification options. The maps and visualizations included in the Atlas can be used to find more viable paths to greater productive knowledge and prosperity.
Using firm level data from Africa and Asia, we estimate the impact of being in a special economic zone (SEZ) on a firm's probability of exporting, export intensity, and value of exports. At the extensive margin, we find that SEZ firms in open economies are 25% more likely to export than their non-SEZ counterparts, with a large negative effect in closed economies. At the intensive margin, we find that SEZs increase the value of exports, but only in countries with barriers to imports where the estimate increase is 3.6%. Thus, the estimated effect of introducing an SEZ can be meaningful, but is heavily contingent on the local economic environment.
This chapter offers a critical overview of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is a Chinese development strategy that focuses on economic, cultural and political cooperation between China and the world through the land-based and maritime Silk Road. In particular, it discusses the Pakistani section of the BRI, known as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The chapter discusses the financial and other aspects of CPEC, highlights its significance for China and Pakistan, and also outlines some key issues and challenges.
The establishment of special economic zones is a crucial strategic choice for China’s development, and developing special economic zones first in order to stimulate the economic take-off of the whole country is China’s way towards modernization, which is exerting a profound and far-reaching impact all around the world. In practice, China’s special economic zones have dynamically evolved in terms of time dimension, in 35 years, by shifting a focus from institutional experiment to regional development to developmental issues, and changing the desired function from “overall” to “strategically regional” to “specifically local”, with its essential connotation characterized by institutional experiment—comprehensive practice—path exploration; however, in general, the historical procedure of China’s special economic zones centers on a target system, a developmental path and an institutional change mode for finding answers.
This study asks whether Cambodia’s establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) since late 2005 has been successful, based on the evidence to date. SEZs have attracted significant levels of foreign investment into the country that would not have been present otherwise, creating around 68,000 jobs, with equal or better pay and better prospects than their alternatives. A significant feature of the Cambodian experience is that the government has left the establishment and management of the zones to private sector developers. The policy measures needed to enhance the international competitiveness of the zones are similar to those needed in the rest of the economy: infrastructure must be upgraded; trade facilitation needs to be improved; electricity supplies must be made more reliable; corruption reduced and rules of payment to government agencies clarified; and labour quality must be upgraded through investment in basic literacy and numeracy.