Different Governments, Same Problems: Pakistan’s Economy 1999–2013

Abstract

‘Pakistan may be on its way toward an economic milestone that so far has been reached by only one other populous country, the United States’, so wrote the New York Times on 18 January 1965; the London Times echoed this sentiment on 26 February 1966 saying that ‘the survival and development of Pakistan is one of the most remarkable examples of state and nation building in the post-war period’. Forty years later, other international newspapers and magazines offered a bouquet of sobriquets which included Pakistan being called ‘the most dangerous place in the world’, a ‘failed state’, and a ‘rogue state with a nuclear arsenal’. At the same time, countries which were considered far less developed and with fewer chances of economic progress or survival, such as South Korea, Malaysia, China and India, overtook Pakistan soon after it was heralded as a great success in the 1960s. Clearly, within the time span of a little over two generations, Pakistan’s great promise came undone.