On Wednesday, 3 September 2025, Mr. Almas Hyder, Chairman, SPEL. Ltd., delivered a lecture on “Industrial Development in Pakistan” to the participants of the 38th Senior Management Course at the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.
Mr. Almas situated Pakistan’s experience within a long arc, from a negligible industrial base at independence and early state-led investments (PIDC, import licensing, through the 1960’s export incentives, the 1970s’ nationalisation, the 1980s’ de-nationalisation, and the post-1988 liberalisation, before noting a period of de-industrialisation after 2008 and recent macro headwinds (slower growth, sharp devaluation, and elevated policy rates).
Turning to present constraints, Mr. Hyder highlighted contractionary development spending (PSDP), a tax regime that raises costs and discourages scale, and high energy tariffs that erode competitiveness. He underscored the need to rationalise customs and sales-tax structures, ensure raw-material access at global prices, address under-invoicing and smuggling, and align power and gas tariffs with regional peers. Land scarcity near urban centres, regulatory frictions; now assessed globally under the World Bank’s B-READY framework, and modest FDI deepen the investment challenge, calling for regulatory pruning “guillotine”, clearer policy signals on exchange-rate and tariff paths, and faster logistics upgrades.
As a way forward, he argued for an export-oriented industrial policy under a “Made-in-Pakistan” banner: regionally competitive energy, predictable taxation, and consistent incentives for investment, listing, and scale; deeper SME finance with facilitation on compliance, operational SEZs close to major cities; and trade facilitation (EXIM-banking, accredited labs, broader product/market mix) to move up value chains. In discussion, participants explored timelines for tariff reform, options to crowd-in private investment, and measures to embed SMEs in formal supply chains, reinforcing the lecture’s call for execution discipline and policy consistency to restore industrial dynamism.