Imtiaz Gul's recent column titled 'Planning Commission or Graveyard of Fantasies' is a thought-provoking read — sharp, eloquent, but ultimately a portrait painted without perspective. It presents Pakistan's planning journey as a string of "dreams that died", blaming Vision 2025 and now Uraan Pakistan 2035 for our industrial and economic woes. It's a familiar argument — rhetorically powerful, but factually unconvincing.

Vision 2025 was not a fantasy. It was a serious, evidence-based national framework crafted through hundreds of consultations with provinces, industry, academia and civil society. It translated the aspirations of a young, restless nation into seven pillars of inclusive growth and modernisation. The first manifestation of that vision — the 11th Five-Year Plan (2013-18) — remains one of Pakistan's most successful development periods. GDP growth averaged nearly 5%, inflation was at historic lows, public investment reached record levels, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) emerged as a transformative growth engine, attracting over $25 billion in investments.

It was under Vision 2025 that Pakistan achieved one of its most remarkable turnarounds — the elimination of chronic load-shedding that had crippled industry and daily life for over a decade, and the revival of investor and business confidence through record energy and infrastructure expansion. The global firm PwC, in its World in 2050 Report (2017), projected that if Pakistan continued on that trajectory, it was poised to become one of the world's top 20........

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