On Wednesday, 30^th July 2025, Dr. Manzoor Ahmad, Member, Prime Minister’s Committee on Implementation of Tarriff Reforms, delivered a lecture on “Trade Policy and Diplomacy: Challenges and Prospectus” to the 38^th Senior Management Course at the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.

Dr. Manzoor opened the topic with the evolution of trade policy with its key phases started from 16^th century to date and discussed impacts of these policies over global economic development, especially during last four decades. In the next phase, he focused on the critical appraisal of Pakistan’s Trude Policy and identified it as inward looking-import substitution, focused on geo-politics than geo-economics and devoid of regional or global integration. He identified a clear lack of internal coordination among the Ministry of Foreign Affair and Ministry of Commerce on this very issue

Dr. Manzoor while dissecting the trade policy, identified that Pakistan is not a part of any major trading bloc at the moment, hence not able to use her strategic position. He also pointed out low ambition to achieve the potential available in some bilateral trade agreements with some Asian and South Asian countries. However, he pointed out certain recent tariff reforms as heartening and urged for continued reforms in this area in the positive direction. In the last lag of his presentation, he discussed tariff policy of Trump administration in the US broadly and discussed its impacts on countries including Pakistan.

During Q&A session, participants posed various question to understand recent trade reforms and linkages with the economic growth. Dr. Manzoor responded to these questions in a detailed manner concluded the talk on a positive note.