THE decision to merge the Board of Investment (BOI) and the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) gives Pakistan an opportunity to rethink how it attracts investment. Whether this becomes genuine reform or merely another institutional reshuffle depends on one question: can any investment promotion agency succeed when the investment climate itself remains fragmented?

Successful investment promotion agencies are remarkably similar, despite operating in very different economies. Singapore’s Economic Development Board, Ireland’s IDA and Costa Rica’s CINDE are recognised global leaders. More recently, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade has shown how a transition economy can integrate investment promotion with industrial development, exports and trade. Their common feature is not institutional design alone, but their ability to market a coherent economic strategy rather than compensate for fragmented policies.

Uzbekistan’s main lesson is not the design of its investment agency, but the political will to reform the wider investment climate. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s government amended dozens of laws within a few years. Investment promotion followed reform.

Pakistan has tended to reverse that sequence. It first establishes new institutions — BOI, SIFC, Special Economic Zones, investment conferences and roadshows — while leaving taxation, energy pricing, tariffs, foreign exchange, long-term finance and regulation largely unresolved.

No agency can compensate for those shortcomings. A........

© Dawn