A Lecture Discussion (LD) on “Investment and Business Facilitation” was held on Wednesday, 20^th August 2025 at National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore. Aim of the LD was to enhance the understanding of the participants of 44^th MCMC about the investment and business environment in Pakistan.

The guest speaker started with discussing the three fallacies about Pakistan’s Government that its expenditure is too high which needs to be reduced, she is importing too much and its import bill should be curtailed, domestic industry needs protection to grow and start exporting. One by one he proved all 3 to be counter productive in the context of investment and business environment in Pakistan using global comparisons. For investment, he suggested to follow export led model which increases foreign exchange, technology transfer, improvement of current account balance and tax revenue, leading to sustainable economic growth. He discussed various types of investments declaring Efficiency seeking investment as the best form of investment.

In latter part of his presentation, he discussed the hurdles in ease of doing business in Pakistan. These included high burden (time and cost) for business, three-tiered compliance structure (Federal /Provincial / Municipal), primitive laws & rules, overlapping regulations and competing regulatory mandates, non-availability of information and highly uncertain outcomes for businesses and offered simple solutions for them. The speaker also discussed a ten-indicator business life cycle. He shared his success stories with the participants to encourage them to play a positive role in making the environment conducive for business and investment in Pakistan.