巴基斯坦：选定问题（英）2024

Pakistan’s Economic Performance and Challenges

Introduction

• Recent Decade’s Performance: Pakistan has lagged behind its regional peers in terms of income per capita, competitiveness, and export performance.
• Growth Rates: From 2000 to 2022, Pakistan’s GDP per capita grew at an average annual rate of only 1.9%, significantly lower than other countries like Bangladesh (4.5%), India (4.9%), Vietnam (5%), and China (7.5%).
• Living Standards: Pakistan has seen a decline in living standards, highlighting the need for urgent policy corrections.

Drivers of Decline in Living Standards

• Weak Contributions from Capital and Productivity: Economic growth between 2000 and 2020 was primarily driven by physical capital accumulation and increased labor hours, contributing about 1.9 and 1.15 percentage points per year, respectively. Total factor productivity (TFP) added about 0.8 percentage points per year, with minimal improvement in labor quality.
• Trade Performance: Weak export growth and limited trade openness pose significant challenges. Pakistan’s export growth has been stagnant, ranking around the 90th percentile in trade restrictions.
• Innovation and Sophisticated Goods: Pakistan struggles to innovate and produce more sophisticated export goods, indicated by its low and declining share of "knowledge-intensive" exports. The country ranks 85th in the Economic Complexity Index, with a heavily biased export basket towards agriculture and textiles.

Policy-Induced Resource Misallocation

• Persistent Misallocation: Persistent policy-induced resource misallocation hampers investment and productivity enhancement, locking resources in low-productivity sectors.

Economic Complexity

• Export Basket: Pakistan’s export basket is heavily biased towards agriculture and textiles, limiting diversification into more technologically sophisticated products.
• High Tariffs: High tariffs on intermediate and final goods distort the economy, undermining competitiveness and domestic competition, and hindering the transition to more sophisticated goods.

Summary

• Challenges: Pakistan faces significant challenges in maintaining economic growth and improving living standards due to weak capital accumulation, declining productivity, and restrictive trade policies.
• Opportunities: There are opportunities for Pakistan to improve efficiency, reallocate resources towards more advanced goods, and enhance productivity and living standards through targeted policy reforms.