EARLIER this year, I wrote that Pakistan’s hostile geography denies it the luxury to choose between a well-funded military and economic growth. The only way through, therefore, is to make defence spending economically productive by opening the sector to private firms. I have since then been introduced to the state’s attempt at doing just that.

The vehicle is the Defence Industrial Production and Regulatory Authority, created by an ordinance in June. DIPRA absorbs the Ministry of Defence Production and places the entire defence industry, state factories and private firms alike, under a single regulator. The aim is to spur indigenisation, pull private firms into a space hitherto monopolised by the state, and to turn a cost centre into an exporting industry. At a recent seminar on the subject, defence officials engaged the private sector with unprecedented openness. Private is equal to public, they said. Come and register, and you sit at the same table.

This initiative deserves praise as a sector long closed to outsiders is being deliberately opened. However, the ordinance is merely the skeleton. Its substance has been left to rules and regulations not yet written, and it is there that........

© Dawn