Despite a growing web of institutions, Pakistan’s foreign investment framework remains a case study in governance without outcomes.

Pakistan’s investment story is a paradox - an expanding web of institutions, but shrinking results. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan has never lacked attention - only results.

Each decade begins with new promises of reform, new councils, and new slogans about investor facilitation. Yet the data tells a blunt story: after two full cycles of rise and decline, Pakistan’s net FDI inflows fell to a two-decade low, with fresh inflows in FY2022-23 barely crossing USD 340 million, according to data from the State Bank of Pakistan.

The departure of major global corporations - Shell, Telenor, Uber, Procter & Gamble, Bayer, and Pfizer - is not coincidence. It reflects a deeper crisis: Pakistan’s governance failure in managing its investment regime. The institutions created to attract investors have multiplied in form, but not in function.

Institutional expansion without performance

The Board of Investment (BOI), under the Prime Minister’s Office, is designed to be the country’s flagship investment facilitation agency. Over time, it has become increasingly top-heavy, with four regional offices and donor-funded reform cells but with diminishing results.

Despite its expansion, and with one of the most liberal investment policies in the region, Pakistan’s FDI inflows have fallen dramatically. The BOI has drifted from a facilitator and enabler into an administrative symbol of inefficiency - unable to defend, promote, retain or protect the very investments, it was mandated to secure.

Duplication and disarray

Pakistan’s FDI architecture today is a maze: the BOI at the centre, provincial investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in each province, and now the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC).

In theory, this institutional layering should create synergy and shared purpose. In reality, it has produced duplication, turf competition, and bureaucratic confusion. Investors encounter multiple entry points but no single door. The result is paralysis masked as facilitation. What Pakistan calls a “one-window” operation has become a corridor of overlapping windows.

Governance, not policy, is the problem

Pakistan does not suffer from a shortage of policy; it suffers from a shortage of........

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