Not surprising given the circumstances
Pakistan ranked 109 (113 in 2017) out of 126 countries in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2018 owing largely to relentless political uncertainty that has persisted for 71 years, rampant corruption that weakens institutions and an environment that discourages new businesses to set up shop and existing ones to run easily. Parameters such as quality of institutions and market sophistication are key areas where the country is found to be significantly handicapped. Although a third democratic transition of power just took place both the previous tenures were anything but politically stable. In addition to that institutional independence was never a priority of those past governments who would appoint their own people to run crucial institutions in order to maintain maximum amount of control. An economically debilitating by product of this politicization of institutions is a regulatory system fraught with outdated policies and red tapism.
With the lion’s share of the budget being earmarked for defense and infrastructure development every year a negligible insufficient amount is left behind to be spent on education. The result is a pathetic ranking of 120 when it comes to education under the human capital and research head in the report. Much has been made by the previous government about infrastructure development and major investment in energy over their five years. But a ranking of 111 in the infrastructure section accurately reflects how effective some of those energy projects really are given the amount of capital spent versus hours of loadshedding this summer. Information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in particular gets a rating of 110 showing how far we still need to go in terms of availability of internet across the country.
There are however some positives too like ranking 72 in knowledge and technology outputs with metrics such as spending on computer software and ICT exports contributing positively to the overall ranking. The incoming government has to address these decades long issues if they want to achieve their overall goal of better governance through which they aim to revive economic activity and increase investmentin the country.
