Roving Periscope: How to miss out on the USD 20 billion investment the Pakistan way!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In February 2019, then Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi broke the diplomatic protocol, received Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin-Salman (MBS) at the Islamabad Airport, and famously drove him to the PM’s residence in the capital.
In return, MBS promised to invest a whopping USD 20 billion in Pakistan, which could have potentially made the South Asian country an important global investment hub.
Imran left no stone unturned to greet the special guest like a global statesman.
In three-and-a-half years since, however, not a penny of this Saudi largesse has come to Pakistan! In the first phase, they proposed this investment for the energy, petrochemicals, and mining sectors.
The current Pakistani PM, Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, has again invited Saudi investment but is unlikely to get it now in a country threatened with default on foreign debt and a Sri Lanka-like economic crisis, rising prices, and shortages.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had even signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) for investment cooperation worth USD 20 billion. MBS had hoped that the investment will grow further and be beneficial for both countries. He had also announced to set free around 2,000 Pakistani citizens from Saudi prisons. Some 25 lakh Pakistanis work in Saudi Arabia.
The only condition, the Saudi Crown Prince said, was that they create a conducive atmosphere in Pakistan and these investments should be fast-tracked and insulated from the unstable country’s (infamous) political and bureaucratic interference.
Speaking at the Grand national Dialogue, organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute this week, the former chairperson of the Board of Investment (BoI), Haroon Sharif, regretted these crucial investments did not materialize.
He said MBS took him aside and said “unless you insulate it from politics and bureaucracy, this will not happen.”
Pakistan’s continuing volatile politics has remained a discouraging factor for investors as they fear frequent political and bureaucratic interventions and public protests, he said.
Finance Minister Ahsan Iqbal agreed and said Pakistan’s annual intake of investment is only about USD 1.5 billion. It needed a long-term sustainable policy plan of action, one that should not be interrupted owing to political considerations. “We could seek no investment “until and unless we put our house in order, and that causes a consistent policy backed by all the stakeholders”.
In 2019, there was one more reason the Saudis did not invest in Pakistan.
In September 2019, at the behest of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Imran Khan did the unthinkable, without caring for the long-term repercussions. To score some populist points, he joined hands with Turkey and Malaysia and announced the launch of a BBC-type TV channel against Islamophobia. The three countries created a non-Arab, anti-West pressure group within the 57-nation Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The angry Saudis smelt a conspiracy in this attempt to dislodge the Arab leadership from the OIC, which is headquartered in Jeddah.
To punish Pakistan and wean it away from Turkey and Malaysia, the Saudis arm-twisted Islamabad and pressured it to repay the debt of some USD 4 billion. Pakistan fell on its knees, paid up the installments, and turned almost bankrupt.
Not only this, he rubbed the US, France, the European Union, Israel, and the UAE the wrong way at a time the Arabs were trying to improve relations with Jerusalem.
