More than a decade ago, an economic expert looked around the television studio where we sat, ringed by cameras, lights and screens, and set me a challenge. "Name three things in this room invented in Pakistan." I could not name one. Nothing has changed since.

The scoreboard says so. In the World Intellectual Property Organization's Global Innovation Index 2025, Pakistan ranks 99th among 139 economies. On innovation inputs, the money and minds a country feeds into new ideas, we rank 124th, near the bottom of the world. Not one Pakistani cluster makes the top 100 innovation hubs. The same organisation's country profile counts 480 patent applications filed by Pakistanis at home, fewer than two per million people, against nearly 51,000 trademark filings, 26th in the world. South Korea files over 7,000 patent applications for every hundred billion dollars of output; we file about 35. In a whole year we filed two international patent applications. Two. We are quick to brand a biryani and unable to patent a better stove.

Have you ever wondered why your media does not bring this story to you? Television economic journalism is dead. What survives is scandal and the same budget-week boilerplate: deficit, revenue, governance, circular debt. No deep dive, no soul searching.

The truth is that every time the government signs a free or preferential trade agreement, one question comes to mind: what are we going to export? We sell raw and half-made goods with little value added. The export market is a buyer's market. Without a real edge you lose your place fast, and someone else takes it.

Ask our businesses about falling........

© The Express Tribune