Asia’s next growth story cannot be imported; Pakistan must acquire the institutions with which to write its own.

“Asia’s Next Growth Story.” Finance & Development, September.

“Asia’s New Growth Challenge.” Finance & Development, September.

The IMF’s new Asian growth prescription recognises fragmentation, demography, artificial intelligence, industrial policy and declining public trust. Its relevance to Pakistan is undeniable. Lessons drawn mainly from Southeast Asia, however, cannot be transplanted into an economy with low investment, a narrow export base, fractured regional relations and institutions organised to protect incumbents.

Asia is not one economy

A dividend that must be earned

Protection without discipline

Regionalism without a region

The Pakistan applicability test

Part III argued that a price is a record of power. Production records power no less clearly. Credit, land, energy, tariffs, import permissions, infrastructure and public procurement determine which enterprise can learn, expand and export. Development policy begins before a product reaches the market: it begins with the institutional allocation of opportunity.

The September 2026 issue of the IMF’s Finance & Development deserves a more serious response than habitual denunciation. Gita Bhatt’s editorial presents resilience, inclusive technology and pragmatic regional cooperation as the next sources of Asian growth. It also concedes the decisive political test: growth must yield secure work, upward mobility and trust between State and citizen. That admission brings the argument close to Pakistan’s central problem.

The issue is also intellectually revealing. An IMF platform now carries Ha-Joon Chang’s defence of infant-industry protection and ‘managed trade’, beside warnings about market concentration, precarious work and the unequal gains from technology.

This is some distance from the old formula of indiscriminate liberalisation. The collection is not a single IMF programme—the magazine itself says the authors’ opinions need not represent Fund policy—but it exposes a widening debate that Pakistan must enter with evidence rather than slogans.

Asia is not one economy

Krishna Srinivasan describes Asia as producing nearly 40% of world output and two-thirds of global growth. His analysis identifies slowing productivity, ageing, trade fragmentation, energy insecurity and artificial intelligence as the defining forces.

Deeper regional integration could, on the IMF’s model, raise regional real GDP by about 1.8% in the long run, while AI could add between 0.2 and one percentage point to annual growth in economies with strong fundamentals. These are conditional model results, not automatic dividends. The conditions—skills, infrastructure, capable institutions and firms able to absorb........

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