Investment promotion

THE decision to merge the Board of Investment (BOI) and the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) gives Pakistan an opportunity to rethink how it attracts investment. Whether this becomes genuine reform or merely another institutional reshuffle depends on one question: can any investment promotion agency succeed when the investment climate itself remains fragmented?

Successful investment promotion agencies are remarkably similar, despite operating in very different economies. Singapore’s Economic Development Board, Ireland’s IDA and Costa Rica’s CINDE are recognised global leaders. More recently, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade has shown how a transition economy can integrate investment promotion with industrial development, exports and trade. Their common feature is not institutional design alone, but their ability to market a coherent economic strategy rather than compensate for fragmented policies.

Uzbekistan’s main lesson is not the design of its investment agency, but the political will to reform the wider investment climate. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s government amended dozens of laws within a few years. Investment promotion followed reform.

Pakistan has tended to reverse that sequence. It first establishes new institutions — BOI, SIFC, Special Economic Zones, investment conferences and roadshows — while leaving taxation, energy pricing, tariffs, foreign exchange, long-term finance and regulation largely unresolved.

No agency can compensate for those shortcomings. A single investment window cannot overcome multiple policy doors that remain closed.

The BOI-SIFC merger should be viewed not as an administrative exercise, but as a chance to undertake deeper reforms.

An investor considering Pakistan asks familiar questions. Is the tax regime stable? Are energy prices competitive? Will tariffs remain predictable? Is long-term finance available? Can profits and royalties be remitted without uncertainty? How long will approvals take? Will contracts be enforced? These decisions are made in boardrooms on the basis of commercial returns, not administrative arrangements. Unless the answers are convincing, no amount of promotion will persuade companies to commit billions of dollars.

The merged organisation’s first task, therefore, should be to help the government develop a coherent investment proposition. Promotion should follow sound policy, not substitute for its absence.

Pakistan also needs to be more selective. Success should not be measured by the headline value of memoranda of understanding or announced projects, but by investment that creates productive jobs, generates exports, transfers technology, develops local suppliers and strengthens foreign exchange earnings. This means favouring export-oriented foreign direct investment over projects serving protected domestic markets. Minerals processing, food processing, pharmaceuticals, information technology, value-added textiles, engineering products and tourism can generate sustainable foreign exchange while raising productivity. Infrastructure investment should likewise be judged by whether it improves export competitiveness.

Nor should the new organisation focus only on foreign investors. Domestic and foreign investment are complementary: Pakistani companies can become suppliers, partners and exporters alongside multinationals, and facilitating productive domestic investment should be part of the mandate.

The merged institution should not merely act as a project approval office. It should proactively identify global companies whose supply chains match Pakistan’s advantages, prepare tailored investment propositions, and coordinate the infrastructure, skills, logistics and regulatory support needed to make those investments viable. Neither the BOI nor the SIFC currently has this capability.

The private sector should play a larger role in this effort. Exporters, industrialists, technology firms, logistics providers and financial institutions understand investor requirements and global competition better than most government departments. Their role should be advisory, not regulatory, with safeguards against conflicts of interest.

The work should not end once an investment is approved. In successful economies, much new investment comes from existing investors expanding operations. Helping them reinvest, resolve problems and deepen local supply chains is often more productive than constantly pursuing new entrants.

The SIFC offers a useful lesson. It brought the civilian and military leadership together and accelerated decisions on several projects, yet its wider ambition of transforming Pakistan’s investment landscape remained elusive because coordination cannot substitute for reform. High-level intervention may expedite files and provide one-off exceptional treatment, but it cannot permanently fix inconsistent taxation, uncompetitive energy costs, tariff distortions, regulatory uncertainty, weak contract enforcement or limited access to long-term finance. Investors seek predictable institutions, not repeated escalation to apex committees.

The BOI-SIFC merger should therefore be viewed not as an administrative exercise, but as a chance to undertake deeper reforms. The new organisation should be judged not by announcements, but by realised investment, export-oriented FDI, productive jobs, technology transfer, supplier development and foreign exchange earnings.

Investment promotion agencies do not create competitiveness; they market it. Even the best marketer cannot sustainably sell a product whose value fails to match its promise. Pakistan does not need a more persuasive salesman. It needs a more competitive product: coherent taxation, competitive energy pricing, predictable tariffs, efficient regulation, access to long-term capital, consistent economic policies, speedy dispute resolution and, above all, a secure law-and-order environment. Without these, even the most polished investment promotion organisation will struggle to convince serious investors.

The writer is a former CEO of Unilever Pakistan and of the Pakistan Business Council.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2026

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