Pakistan can register a company online and still make running it an obstacle course. After incorporation come tax portals, provincial levies, inspections, no-objection certificates, municipal permissions and demands for documents that another arm of the state already holds. Every government promises a one-window operation. The business owner keeps moving from window to window. This is the problem addressed by the PRIME Institute’s new policy brief, Regulatory Reforms in Pakistan: A Comparative Review of Diagnostic Tools. Tuaha Adil and Ahmed Qadir compare four instruments available to reformers: the World Bank’s Business Ready (B-READY) framework, PIDE’s Sludge Series, the Regulatory Guillotine and the Standard Cost Model (SCM).

Their central argument is sensible. These are not competing brands. B-READY benchmarks broad weaknesses; a sludge audit maps a particular transaction; the guillotine reviews the stock of rules; and SCM estimates the administrative cost of complying with information obligations. Used together, they can turn an abstract complaint about red tape into a more disciplined reform programme.

The brief's most revealing figure, however, also tests its thesis. Of 558 reforms endorsed by the Cabinet Committee on Regulatory Reforms under the REMIT programme, only 79 had been implemented—an execution rate of 14 per cent. Pakistan is not short of diagnoses or reform vocabulary. It lacks institutions able to overcome the incentives that preserve complexity. The comparison contains a technical error that matters. It says B-READY scores are aggregated into an “overall composite index” for each economy. The World Bank’s methodology expressly says there is no aggregate economy score. B-READY reports results for three pillars and 10 topics, placing economies in quintiles within each. Reformers should not convert a diagnostic dashboard into the league table the World Bank chose not to produce.

The brief also says B-READY data tend to represent registered firms in major cities. Excluding informal enterprises is indeed a serious limitation in Pakistan. Still, the Enterprise Survey component samples registered firms across sizes, sectors and locations; it is mainly some expert-based modules that use standardised scenarios, including the largest business city. A fair critique must........

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