Investment Climate
Pakistan follows liberal investment regime and facilitation being its foremost cornerstones for investors’ confidence and conducive environment to attract local and foreign investment. Till 1997, Pakistan pursued the investment policy favorable for the industrial and manufacturing sector. The first Investment Policy was framed by BOI in 1997 which opened all economic sectors including infrastructure, social, and services for foreign investment. Keeping in view the importance of investment for economic growth and fast economic globalization trends around the world, Investment Policy 2013 was formulated to further improve the investment climate in the country. Pakistan Investment Policy, 2023 focuses on export oriented FDI by looking to improve Pakistan’s economic complexity, by diversifying products and services for export, which will assist the country in gaining higher export earnings through value-added efficiency seeking activities. More emphasis on Investor protection while still providing regulatory space for the government. Pakistan Investment Policy, 2023 introduces the modern concept of ‘smart’ incentives and development of performance-based incentives and indicators.
Ease of Doing Business
The World Bank Group’s Doing Business project provides a measure of the “Ease of Doing Business” through a set of objective indicators that focus on the impacts of laws, regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies. Pakistan has consistently made efforts to improve business environment in the country. Since 2016, almost 300 reforms have been implemented to improve investment climate in the country. Resultantly, Pakistan improved 39 positions in EODB ranking in the last two years. Pakistan was recognized as the top reformer in South Asia and sixth reformer in the world.
The World Bank Group is implementing a new corporate flagship, Business Ready (B-READY), to assess the business and investment environment worldwide annually. B-READY improves upon and replaces Doing Business.
