Institutional quality and strength are also critical factors. This ensures how robustly reform measures are implemented and how efficiently adjustments are made during the process to respond to changing circumstances. Again, Pakistan’s case is not encouraging given the progressive decline in the civil service and its predominantly generalist nature. In various periods in the past, the finance ministry, for example, didn’t even have a single trained economist. The eroding capacity of state institutions has emerged in recent years as a key impediment to policy implementation.

There is much for Pakistan’s economic managers to learn from how other countries have achieved sustained levels of high growth. Among useful publications that have analyzed this is the Growth Report, which offers important lessons from the experience of countries around the world. The report was the work of the Commission on Growth and Development set up by the World Bank, which comprised distinguished members mostly from developing countries. Though published in 2008 its findings are just as valid today. Most instructive is the report’s identification of characteristics shared by countries that implemented successful growth strategies. They fully exploited the world economy, ensured macroeconomic stability, maintained high rates of saving and investment, allowed markets to allocate resources and they all had credible and capable governments. Above all, the report points to the understanding by policymakers that “successful development entails a decades-long commitment and a fundamental bargain between the present and the future.”