Musings-August 2025

Dr Manzoor Ahmad.

As far as WTO agreements are concerned, I have three main regrets:

1. First, in implementing WTO agreements, we usually looked for flexibilities available to developing countries rather than undertaking real reforms. Unlike Vietnam and others, who kept their bound tariff rates close to their applied rates, Pakistan deliberately maintained a gap of at least 50 percentage points. This was done to preserve the option of raising tariffs without constraint, but it also meant we avoided meaningful discipline and predictability.

   
   

2. Second, while more than half of WTO members are signatories to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which requires zero tariffs on IT products, Pakistan chose to stay out, similar to most African countries The FBR considered duty exemptions on laptops and related products a revenue loss without realizing the far greater benefits of broader access, innovation, and integration into the global digital economy. Today, over 97% of global trade in IT products and services is among ITA members, yet we remain outside. PM Nawaz Sharif twice over-ruled FBR to become a party, but somehow FBR managed to ignore his directives.

   
   

3. Third, while most countries (except the US and now India) are actively pushing for new rules in emerging areas, such as e-commerce, domestic regulation, environmental goods, and services facilitation, Pakistan refuses to participate, or even engage to learn from these processes.

Among all the factors, two have the greatest potential to accelerate our GDP growth beyond what we’ve seen in the past 15 years: international trade and a strong focus on information technology.

Ironically, when Pakistan joined the WTO agreements on telecom and financial services in 1996 and liberalized them over the committed seven years, completing reforms by 2003, we reaped immense benefits. That experience shows what is possible when we take bold steps.

One more regret I must add is Pakistan’s handling of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs). When it was implemented in 2000, many developing countries with auto industries sought extensions to reform. Countries like Indonesia, India, and Turkey used that time to dismantle trade-distorting import-substitution policies such as deletion programs. Pakistan, however, avoided reform by retaining the same policies through very high tariffs.

The difference is clear. Back then, Indonesia and Pakistan both produced about 200,000 cars annually, with little or no exports, similar to India and Turkey. Twenty years later, those countries produce over a million cars each and export nearly half, while Pakistan is still producing around 200,000 cars with zero exports. Even now, when the government decided in this years' budget to reduce tariffs on cars to regional levels, the Japanese ambassador wrote a letter saying that unless Pakistan revises its policy, Japanese companies might reconsider their investment.

Resolution of RoW issue is a big step forward. If the govt could resolve two more obstacles ie, release of new spectrum and highly unfair tax policies for this sector, our digital drive could move at a much faster pace.

Dr Naveed Iftikhar

For sovereign AI, you need investment and enabling policies for digitalization and computing. IT Ministry has been making many efforts towards this goal. But see the portion of public investment being spent on digital and IT infrastructure. Over a trillion Rs PSDP plus provincial ADPs. How much is being spent on digitalization and computing infrastructure? Digital and AI inequalities are real. Both international level and domestic. We can also analyze private investment in this sector. Minimal. It requires a national resolve. IT Ministry can't do it all. Our political, bureaucratic leadership need to own and spearhead this reform in every sector. Like what needs to be done in Healthcare or land registration or Fintech...The IT Ministry can provide guidelines and frameworks but investment decisions are done by the relevant ministries and forums like CDWP, PDWPs etc.

I often say that manufacturing train arrived in developing countries in late 90s and early 2000. With WTO and global trade narratives. Many countries benefitted with open trade policies. Dr @Manzoor Ahmad, Customs. WT0 sb can inform us more how India, Vietnam, and other countries opened up engineering and other trade. We followed protectionism. Good quality export requires good quality imports. Had many such discussions with @Manzoor Ahmad, Customs. WT0 sb and learned a lot from him. Our exchange rate policies, risk averse banking and less focus on technically skilled work force did not let us benefit from global trade. Now near to impossible to compete in manufacturing and the manufacturing train left us in 2015. With global populism and tariffs etc. digital and IT train is here since the early 2010s. Now the AI train has also arrived....let's see..

We need to focus more on the application stage unless we have a good R&D and entrepreneurial foundation for scientific innovation. This can also happen by being a part of the AI advancement value chain. Like KSA and China's partners in AI.

Using their computing resources and building scientific collaborations. We have scientific and entrepreneurial talent but we need investment and computing. China and KSA can be good candidates for such a partnership. Some negotiations are underway with both. But we need to make it more tangible.

Data protection laws are important. Must be enforced. However, it should be navigated carefully. Like how in the name of FATF many barriers were created for small businesses and freelancers. We must consider unintended consequences of such laws and policies. More importantly we should seriously work together and review Pakistan Cloud First Policy. Our public sector won't be able to utilize ai opportunities with the current policy. We need to rethink data privacy levels and categorization. Local cloud solutions will never catch up with big tech. And big tech does not consider it a big market for establishing their own data centers locally. However, an increased focus on digitalization and digital transformation will enlarge the market size gradually. One day we would get big tech data centers here. But it may not happen soon. The Public Sector and the regulated private sector will miss this revolution without high quality cloud and computing services.

Dinar Wali

Some of the most beautiful glaciers and lakes in Chitral Valley, northwest Pakistan, are the focus of my remote sensing models. One of the region’s major rivers, the Kabul River, begins here. It flows through Chitral, crosses into Afghanistan, and then returns to Pakistan.

These glaciers and lakes are now at serious risk because of rising temperatures and global CO₂ emissions. Pakistan’s own contribution to these emissions is very small. In contrast, neighboring China is the world’s largest emitter due to rapid industrialization. This makes it vital for China to work with Pakistan, at the very least by establishing a shared data link for monitoring and protection.

Atifa Asghar

Telecom or rather broadband infrastructure is the backbone of digital economy everywhere in the world. Without a robust sturdy technology infrastructure nothing in the digital economy will thrive. Disaster preparedness and relief is highly dependent on a sturdy communications system. Now that we know that Pakistan is extremely vulnerable due to climate change. For the past 3 years we are consistently seeing GLOFs in Northern Areas therefore high time that a disaster management system comprising of multiple angles be enhanced using modern technologies.

In the US everyone gets a "Amber" alert even the ones whose phones are on international roaming. It's not an opt-in services. It's a push notification mandated by their government which goes on every cellphone within the area. We should also be very easily set up a similar system for disaster management and other emergencies.

Fouad Bajwa

They key to success here is in what platform will the government develop and provide to its citizens to facilitate, build, host and deploy in AI. When we look at how global powers are shaping their AI ecosystems, they have brought in these 4 strategic actions to

1. Facilitate an ecosystem of funding for education, research, innovation, commercialization and massive collaboration through a system of knowledge management.

2. For build, an ecosystem of massive development effort is required, you need private sector investment, use your surplus energy for data centres and local cloud infrastructure deployment. You need GPUs manufacturing and compute power development because AI is highly dependent on this.

3. We need to look at Dubai for their AI hosting strategy where they developed and open sourced Falcon LLM. This is a big lesson that in order to create a foundation for national superiority in AI, a domestic open source AI model needs to be deployed so that the nation can build upon it and then...

4. What is the national and global deployment strategy of your national LLM or AI model. Will you bind it to your nation's international cooperation policy or will you compete with the OpenAIs'/Chatgpts', Falcons' AI's, DeepSeeks' and all the other open source LLMs or

5. Will you do none of the above and just be a consumer of technology as always..

All this requires more than just a policy, it requires an urgent and rapid strategic approach that views national security, defense, economic and social developments as critical elements to be impacted by foreign AI.

3 August, 2025. Aftab Haider, SEO, Pakistan Single Window

Pakistan Single Window has implemented an AI powered chatbot on the PSW website and trade information portal-the first public sector agency to do that.

3 August, 2025. Dr Aneel Salman, in Express tribune

By 2030, AI adoption could increase Pakistan's GDP by up to 12% and generate over 3.5 million new jobs. The policy positions Pakistan not as a passive user of imported technology, but as a sovereign innovator — producing local AI models, building indigenous talent and exporting smart solutions.

 1 August 2025- Twitter Space on the National AI Policy 2025, by Dr Naveed Iftikhar

1. Almost everyone appreciated that finally we have a Policy. We were lagging in this area. The policy does highlight important initiatives such as upskilling the workforce and public sector officials.

2. We also discussed how the lack of access to quality/affordable internet and computing resources can hinder some efforts.

3. Lack of digitalization is a huge issue.

4. We need local data for training LLMs.

5. HEC need to reduce its control over universities in order to promote innovation and adaptation.

6. More focus on Physical AI was needed.

7. Pakistan does not have a good experience of establishing Centers of Excellence. So it must be considered.

8. As we move along a continuous adaptation will be needed. because AI is evolving.

9. Huge awareness needed in schools and universities.

10. More partnerships between universities and tech companies needed.