Comments on "Planning Experience in Pakistan"

Pakistan's industrial achievement in a relatively short spanof time and in the light of the experience of the similarly placedcountries has been favourably commented upon by the observers andanalysts, both at home and abroad. Dr. M. N. Huda, in his ConferenceAddress, refers to this impressive record of Pakistan's progress in thecourse of which many industries have grown from the state of infancy andthat of teething troubles to a state of viability and adult¬hood [2, Pp.10-11]. Indeed, the rapid growth of the manufactured exports fromPakistan in recent years may be considered as an indication of theextent to which the industrial progress in Pakistan has been successful.For the future, he rightly advocates an aggressive but selectiveindustrialization based on both the home and export markets. Moreover,his observations do em¬phasize the need for increasing the productivityof the existing industries as well as for a careful application of thecriterion of efficiency in the selection of the future pattern ofindustrialization. This note seeks to indicate the inter¬relationshipbetween the industrial efficiency and the export performance; it drawsattention to a few neglected aspects of the recent studies onindust¬rial efficiency in Pakistan such as the intra-firm differences inefficiency. It explores the rationale and the implications of'infant-industry" protection for industrialization inPakistan.