CONTENTS
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10 Pakistani television is moving to YouTube 15 The Boomers are (mostly) retired. Who’s in charge now?
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21 Pakistan Needs a Pause Muhammad Azfar Ahsan 24 “Pakistan is a frontier market for enterprise AI but, its lack of infrastructure is a problem”, SAP President 26 Sequencing the Wheat Reform Before November Mohsin Leghari
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30 Traders at the Pak-Iran border are becoming impatient for business to kick off 32 A salt mine, two suitors and a Rs42.6bn counter-offer 35 The PCB won’t show you their receipts. Here’s why`
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By Farooq Tirmizi
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ven your grandmother watches her dramas on YouTube. And the advertisers have noticed. A landmark is about to be crossed this year, and may already have been crossed: when a majority of the revenue generated by the Pakistani entertainment television industry will be through digital platforms – almost entirely YouTube. The milestone means a lot for the entertainment business, and the industries that serve it and work alongside it, such as consumer-facing companies that advertise on the television channels, the advertising agencies and media buying houses that made their living on the existence of a diversified media industry, and the talent that creates the content in the first place. But first, here is the key data point: the only publicly listed television network, and therefore the only one for which comprehensive financial data is available is Hum Networks. And for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2026, the latest for which data is available, suggests that approximately 48% of Hum Network’s revenue came from digital platforms – almost entirely YouTube – and the remainder came from traditional advertising sources. Data for the other two big networks – Geo Entertainment and ARY Digital – is more sparse, and a breakdown of digital versus traditional revenue is not available publicly, but based on other data, we suspect that the two channels may be even more dependent on digital revenue than Hum Networks. This milestone in some ways represents something important: access to mobile broadband internet is ubiquitous enough in Pakistan now that it has completely transformed how entertainment is consumed in the country. The days of everyone gathering around the dinner table and watching the PTV drama for that night before the Khabarnama are long gone. But perhaps in other ways, it is not that important at all. After all, content is still getting produced, the writers, actors, producers, and directors all continue to be employed and make ever-increasing amounts of money, the companies involved in the production of entertainment remain the same. The only person who loses out is the neighbourhood cable-wala from whom many Pakistanis get access to their television line-up. And even he may not lose a lot of his business just yet (more on that later).
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Here is a summary of what is changing, each of which we will examine in turn. The way Pakistanis consume entertainment is changing, which results in the channels that package that entertainment seeing a change in how they make money. It has virtually no effect on the internet service providers but may increase the market for data packages from mobile networks. It may have some impact on what kinds of content will be produced and may – at some point in the future – create the market for a Pakistani digital streaming platform to be big enough to start competing against the channels.
The viewer is changing
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omprehensive data on viewership patterns is hard to come by, but surveys by Gallup Pakistan indicate some of the change we are talking about. Gallup’s survey from October 2025 indicates that the proportion of Pakistanis who primarily access their entertainment options via traditional cable television or a satellite dish now account for only about 33% of all consumers. Smartphones or smart televisions now account for about two thirds of the market between them and, in urban areas, a surprisingly even split between the two. The reasons for this are obviously the same that one sees all over the world: younger viewers are digital natives and start off experiencing content primarily through digital platforms, and their habits then start to carry over to their parents and other older generations. This digital native behaviour is enabled by the proliferation of broadband internet, both mobile and home internet, and the increasing access to cheap smartphones and smart televisions. In other words, even on a television set, people are slightly more likely to be viewing an entertainment program through the YouTube app on that television rather than the live television stream. What they are watching is also changing, though less than one might think.
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Content tastes are expanding
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hen Netflix streaming first started becoming ubiquitous in households in the United States, executives at leading television networks remarked that their competition used to be whatever their competitors decided to put out in the same time slot on the same day, but with the advent of streaming, their competition became every piece of content ever produced until that moment in time. Stated that way, it seems like a daunting task to be in the content production business to see one’s competition expand so rapidly. But there are three factors that temper that degree of competition. The first is recency bias: people still want to watch new content, and while making the old classics more easily accessible means that people will watch them more, their desire for new content does not go away, so producing fresh material continues to have a market. The second is local bias. In theory, a very good Turkish or South Korean television series with subtitles is just as accessible to the Pakistani consumer as the latest ARY Digital drama, but only a tiny fraction of the population will even think to look for it, and even among that population, watching the foreign content will remain a relatively occasional occurrence. Competing against global content is a “2% of the population, 2% of the time” kind of problem. And the third is one that people tend to not think about, but is just as important: when you make it easier for people to consume entertainment content, they will consume a lot more of it, which means that, even though there are a lot more competing sources of content, there are also a lot more viewership minutes to accommodate those sources of content. Not directly proportional to the level of content available, obviously, but combine the other two biases – recency and local content – and Pakistan’s drama producers can rest assured that they will not suddenly be dumped by the Pakistani audience any time soon. Indeed, that expansion of people’s con-
tent viewing time means that even Pakistani content producers have more leeway to experiment with different genres. And the long tail of the YouTube revenue (you get paid for every view, no matter how long after the initial airing of the show those online views come) means that content producers get paid for shows that take off later. An example of a show that had that happen to it is Kuch Ankahi, the 2023 drama on ARY that started off with relatively few online views, averaging about 3 million per episode in the week after each episode was aired, but over time people appear to have kept coming back for rewatches or new viewers discovering the show later. Each episode now has 20 million+ views, which means the bulk of its audience saw it long afte the show stopped airing on television. And ARY will have made just as much money on those late viewers as it did on the initial digital release. Then there is this year’s big hit, Doctor Bahu, which sounds like it might be a typical saas-bahu drama but ends up taking a different route and offers a fresher storyline than one audiences may have been used to seeing in years past.
The change in channel economics
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t the core production level, the economics of content production have not changed. Production houses – some independent, some aligned with specific channels – continue to commission new scripts, hire the talent, and produce the actual single-season dramas that are the core of Pakistani television entertainment. Those production houses then sell that content on to a television network, ideally at a significant profit. The channel then takes the risk of the commercial success of the show: they have essentially acquired the content for mostly a fixed cost that covers the cost of production, plus a hefty margin for the producer. They then try to air it on slots on their network and earn enough in advertising revenue to cover
their cost of doing business. If the show does badly, the loss is entirely theirs. If the show is a big hit, they take most of the returns, though some producers have clauses in their contracts that give them a share of revenue above certain benchmarks. Yes, being a well-connected producer is the best risk-adjusted return in the Pakistani content business. And yes, that means the best risk-adjusted return (thought not necessarily the highest return) in the Pakistani entertainment industry belongs to Humayun Saeed, for having founded Six Sigma Plus and aligned it with ARY Digital. The channel’s revenue stream, however, has shifted significantly over the last few years. As we stated earlier, Hum Networks generates about 48% of their revenue from digital platforms, primarily YouTube, and the rest from television advertising. And disaggregating that picture is even more interesting: the share in digital revenue climbed not just because the absolute amount of digital revenue kept rising, but also because traditional television advertising revenue peaked in the financial year ending June 30, 2024 and has been falling ever since. Overall revenue for the 12-months ending March 31, 2026 is down about 25% because although digital revenue grew by 10% during that period, traditional television advertising revenue fell by over 40% during that same period. Television in Pakistan is going through
what print media already went through: the traditional revenue source from advertising is drying up faster than the digital stream is picking up, though in the case of television, this appears to be a relatively temporary hurdle, since digital revenue is still rising rapidly and is already a plurality – and soon to be majority – of television network revenue. Print’s advertising revenue fell off much earlier than its digital revenue materialized, causing a period of prolonged pain for the industry. Television looks like it will avoid that fate. And while our data on this is reliant on Hum Networks, the smallest of the three major entertainment television networks, we believe the data is likely to be even more skewed towards digital revenue for ARY and GEO Entertainment than for Hum. Since its inception, Hum’s YouTube channel has averaged 9.7 million views a day, though that number is likely an underestimate of recent trends since far fewer people used to view YouTube in Pakistan in 2011, when they started their YouTube channel. For comparison, ARY Digital gets about 20.9 million views per day on its YouTube channel since its inception in 2016. Geo Entertainment averages 12.4 million views per days since its 2008 inception. The total number of videos across all three YouTube channels is approximately equal, which suggests that the viewership difference is in large part due to ARY’s content getting far more views per video than Hum.
Is the local cable-wala finished?
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o if the content producers and the networks that distribute that content are going to continue to make money, who loses? Well, for starters, about 45% of the advertising revenue from digital platforms is captured by YouTube, whereas for traditional advertising, that ad distribution cost is typically captured by local media buying houses and other local intermediaries. The media buying houses will still have a market, though it may have slightly smaller margins, since large advertisers still rely on aggregators to deploy their marketing budgets. The local cable-wala looks more vulnerable at first glance. The total number of licensed local cable television providers went down in 2025, the latest year for which data is available, by about 3.3%. That decline might be small, but it means that the peak of cable television viewing in Pakistan is already in the past and that people will likely be consuming most content via the internet in the future. That means relatively little change for cable internet providers or other broadband internet providers for home internet use. It may increase the revenue from data for mobile telecommunications networks, though even those providers are now effectively introducing near-unlimited usage for even their prepaid
COVER STORY
subscribers, meaning the incremental economic value generated from increased content consumption is likely to be captured elsewhere (the channels and YouTube, mainly). The cable television provider will not completely die out because people are still used to turning to television networks for live television, particularly for sports and for breaking news. And given the fact that Pakistan is in a neighborhood where the instance of war is increasing, the need for breaking news is likely to increase, which means many people are unlikely to completely get rid of their cable television packages.
Are the streaming wars about to start in Pakistan?
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n both the United States, the country that invented internet streaming, and India, our closest cultural neighbour, the advent of broadband internet eventually precipitated both the proliferation of streaming companies as well as an expensive war for content creation among them. Is such a thing likely in Pakistan? Maybe eventually, but we may not be there yet. The biggest reason for why a completely local, independent streaming company may struggle to get off the ground – at least right now – is the fact that that all Pakistani content is effectively available for free on a single platform already: YouTube. Those who do not want to pay for YouTube watch it with ads, and those who want the ad-free experience can now get it for the absurdly low price of Rs479 per month. And YouTube contains virtually every last piece of Pakistani content. So anyone wanting to set up a Pakistani streaming service that includes existing content will have to pay the channels more than what they are making from YouTube in order to persuade them to take their content off YouTube and exclusively onto that platform. In theory, this sounds possible. You-
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Tube earns a fat margin of 45% of all revenue generated on its platform, so undercutting that is at least technically possible. Practically, however, it is likely to be very difficult for several reasons. The first reason is that YouTube has network effects not just for viewers, but also for advertisers. Anyone, from anywhere on the planet who wants to target Pakistani users for ads can go to YouTube and pay based on the YouTube pricing algorithm for the users it wants to target. A local Pakistani platform cannot hope to have those same economies of scale with respect to advertising revenue, which means it will be far more dependent on subscription revenues. And that is a bit of a tall order when competing against an ad-supported free option in YouTube, which, incidentally, is not a platform people quit using even when they do begin subscribing to other streaming services. This challenge can be overcome at least partly through original content, but here, the key thing to keep in mind is that the amount of original shows that people will subscribe to a new streaming service will need to match what they are used to seeing on mature platforms. Here is where the content creation challenge gets interesting. On average, Pakistani networks produce about 100 new dramas between all of the major channels put together. A decade’s worth of content yields about 1,000 titles. Hulu, one of the smallest financially viable streaming services in the United States, has about 3,000 titles. Producing enough original content to fill that perceived gap is a tall order to say the least. It is not impossible, but there is clearly a gap that needs to be overcome somehow.
The India question
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ne final question to answer is whether the increased digitization of Pakistani content means that Pakistani content producers can access the Indian market. It is certainly likely that a substantial portion of the revenue of Pa-
kistani content producers comes from markets outside Pakistan, and one of the largest markets for Pakistani content outside the country is likely to be India. But when one looks at the total number of daily video views relative to the number of broadband internet users in Pakistan, one suspects that it is unlikely to be a substantial percentage of the total revenue. After all, India has a massive content market of its own, a highly diversified base of content providers and platforms, and quite frankly, production values significantly better than those of Pakistan. Do a handful of Indian viewers watch some Pakistani dramas, particularly the big hits? Yes. Are those views responsible for any more than 10% of the total revenue of Pakistani television networks? Doubtful.
Conclusion
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big sea change is taking place in Pakistanis’ relationship with content viewing, but not necessarily the names and faces we all know and like to watch. Bilal Abbas and Sajal Ali are more favoured by the Pakistani audience than any Hollywood or Bollywood stars. Scripts in Urdu will outperform dubbed or subtitled foreign content (notice the silent death of Urdu One, which relied on Urdu dubbing for foreign content). The technology made accessible to us has changed which platforms we use to access that content, and yes, that does mean that at least some of the value of Pakistani content accrues to global platforms like YouTube. But in some ways, that is good because it may result in its parent company Alphabet investing a bit more to retain its market foothold in Pakistan. The increasingly individualized viewing experience means that we get a greater diversity of content, though again, the greater individualized viewing experience means that we increasingly watch things alone rather than as families together. We are in for some profound social changes ahead, enabled by technological and business model innovations. Stay tuned for what’s next. n
COVER STORY
The Boomers are (mostly) retired.
Who’s in charge now?
A generational audit of the (empowered) age cohorts
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By Umar Aziz Khan
he Boomer Babu. During any discourse on public policy, particularly relating to technology or education, there is an oft-recurring mention of this enemy of any and all progress. It is this out-of-touch, often (if not always) corrupt, maladroit decision maker, who is the enemy of all meaningful positive change. They are the Final Stage Big Boss, to borrow the terminology from the world of video games, that is standing in the way of any improvement in the way things work. While there might be some element of truth to the sluggish adoption of new technology by the top bureaucracy, this classification on the basis of a particular age-cohort (“Boomers”) is wholly inaccurate. Even the youngest of the Boomers have retired from government service, and the oldest of them retired two decades ago. The younger folk reading this article might scoff at this and say they don’t literally mean those born before 1964 when they use the term, and that it represents a particular way of thinking rather than the specific age group. Well, firstly, a lot of the usage is, in fact, meant to be literal, whether or not they deny it. Secondly, even if the use of the word actually has expanded to mean all technically challenged luddites, that concept of the can’t-even-use-email uncles still isn’t quite as accurate as one might think. Conversely, the Boomers themselves have been miscategorising Millennials and, now, Gen-Z consistently. They aren’t kids anymore. This writeup looks at the fortunate and powerful amongst each of the age cohorts in Pakistan. We will be looking at CSS cadres (mostly of the PAS and PSP), the commissioned officers in the military services, the elite MTO-inductees in the banking and corporate sectors and also those running the larger (but not yet publicly listed and traded) businesses of the country.
Boomers
By definition: Born between 1946 to 1964. It is a Western demographic phenomenon, mostly applicable to the US. The full term is Baby Boomer i.e an outcome of the Baby Boom.
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World War Two was just over, and under Keynesian economics and the continuation of the New Deal, there was a push for a lot of government spending. A series of legislative exercises, colloquially, the “GI Bills,” made sure the returning soldiers were offered university education (an absolute gamechanger back then) and even easy loans. There was a lot of economic activity and the cocktail of the aforementioned and a stable peace made sure even the non-veterans forgot the dreary days of The Great Depression. These good times made people want to start big families. Hence, the Baby Boom. The ending year of 1964 is where demographers say The Baby Bust took place. After the unusual surge in new births, the sharp decline in the birthrate started in 1965 and continued for the next decade. In Pakistan: The term Boomer, as opposed to the later age cohorts, seems a little quaint in the context of Pakistan. Needless to say, neither the starting nor the ending dates apply to Pakistan. Not even crudely. We had an already strong fertility rate in 1946, and no decline in birthrates in 1964. There can be some similarities, yes, between the Boomers of the sub-continent and those of the West, and those pertain to how new technology rolled out and how the general populace responded to it, but we will get to that a little later. Let us first examine this demographic, which as per the 7th Population and Housing Census of 2023, amounts to somewhere between 5-6% of our population, if we also include the pre-Boomers. Those in government and military service have retired by now. Not all of those in corporate life would have retired by now, but most of them might have. In Pakistan, the overall influence of this demographic in Pakistan is as the patriarchs (and matriarchs) of the extended family. As grandparents and great-grandparents, they wield some considerable influence, which plays out in social, political and economic realities. However, there are some key areas, where their influence is more than this informal sort. Politics: The apex leadership of all the mainstream major political parties is made up of Boomers. We are talking about the absolute top here. Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari and Imran Khan are all Boomers. As are Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, Asfandyar Wali, and Altaf Hussain (for whatever it’s worth.)
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From Left to Right: Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, and Asif Ali Zardari. The leaders of Pakistan’s largest political parties were all born before 1964 and belong to the Baby Boomer Generation. Leadership skews heavily in favour of this age bracket even among smaller political parties. A notable exception might be JI Chief Hafiz Naeem Ur Rehman. He was born in 1972. His predecessor, Siraj ul Haq, was the Jamaat’s last Boomer Emir, but just barely. He was born in 1962. This is not because it is just the way the political party cookie crumbles. This is a curious happenstance at this particular moment in our history. You didn’t - and don’t - have to be a sexagenarian-or-older to be the top boss of a political party. The League’s boss Nawaz Sharif, though he was once Pakistan’s youngest ever chief minister, wore off his military training-wheels and truly came into his own as the head of an independent political party when he was still in his forties. Were something to happen to President Zardari, Bilawal Bhutto, who is already titularly the co-chairperson, will become the sole decision-maker of the PPP, in his thirties. But, as things stand now, the Boomers run this particular show. Civil Service and Military: As mentioned earlier, the oldest of the Boomers started retiring two decades ago, and the absolute youngest,
Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmad Babar Sidhu has been the Chief of the Pakistan Airforce for more than five years. Multiple extensions have given him an unusually long tenure as Air Chief, making him the oldest serving officer among all three branches of Pakistan’s military. Despite this, he does not meet the cut-off as a Boomer. He was born in 1965. ACM Sidhu’s term is supposed to end in March 2028.
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last remaining ones, around two years ago. Some might be on extension, and some might have gotten employment as members of the federal and provincial public service commissions, but those seats are few and far in between, and even those handful of tenures will end soon. Retirements in the military start much, much earlier than other careers, but those amongst the Boomers who kept getting promoted and became generals, all have retired, despite any extensions. Even the current air chief, despite his first extension, increase in the tenure of the services chiefs and his second extension, is not a Boomer. Corporates and Banks: The private sector, even if formalised and publicly listed, doesn’t have to color within the lines as much as the government does. A bank, for instance, can keep renewing the tenures of CEOs nigh indefinitely as long as the fitness criteria are being met; no formal legal hard cap. And since there are expectations of 15-20 years in senior management experience for running a bank, the candidate pool shifts towards older demographics. Therefore, there are a number of banks with Boomer Presidents and CEOs. Bank Al Falah’s Atif Bajwa and Meezan Bank’s (till last year) CEO Irfan Siddiqui are both Boomers. The former’s experience of handling tumult and the latter being the founder-CEO are just some of the many factors why a lot of banks still have Boomers at the helm. Banking in particular likes the stability of the older lot, but the industry is at the cusp of The Great Handover to Gen-X, of whom some are already helming banks. The Seths: Non-banking corporates and MNCs, on the other hand, is where the aforementioned Great Handover is already in full swing. Few Boomer CEO/Presidents there. However, in the “seth” companies, the seths themselves have simply stepped up. Grand old Boomer men like Dawood Hercules’s Hussain Dawood and the Nishat empire’s Mian Muhammad Mansha, serve as the chairmen of their groups, as does Sir Anwar Parvez of Bestway. Smaller Seths: the Boomer owners of a large number of considerably large businesses that aren’t publicly traded - and even some that are - are still in charge. The patriarch - even if his grandson has also graduated from university abroad and, like his son, is also working in the family business - is still pulling the strings. Much to the chagrin of his Gen-X or even Millenial son, who has been ceded much power, but not when it comes to drawing large amounts, or seeking corporate financing.
Gen-X
Definition: Born between 1964 to 1980. Again, it is a Western demographic phenomenon, mostly applicable to the US. Birthrates had plunged in the US from 1964 till around 1981, after which they started rising again, which is why the Millenials born after ‘81 are also called
From left to right: Atif Bajwa, CEO of Bank Alfalah. Mian Mahsa, Chairman of MCB Bank and the owner of the Nishat Group. Sir Anwer Pervez, the owner of UBL and the Bestway Group. All three men represent different facets of the Boomer Generation’s continued hold on corporate Pakistan: both as executives and seths.
The Echo Boomers. Gen-X are the lower birthrate demographic sandwiched between them. In Pakistan: Much like the Boomers before them, the starting and ending dates of the Gen-X has no meaning in Pakistan’s context if we look at demographics alone. However, if we look at certain other factors, the similarities of the cohort across space will finally start. The ending year, 1980, was chosen arbitrarily (this isn’t hard science) by Strauss and Howe, for those of the next generation to be 18 when 2000 rolls by, hence, the name Millenials. Secondly, Gen-X is known to be “the last generation with an analogue childhood.” In Pakistan, this might sound quite privileged, given how there are vast swathes of the country without clean water and electricity, what to speak of digital technology. But for the fortunate category within these age cohorts that this article seeks to look at, the
“digital childhood” comparison does track for Millenials. Gen-X started using computers when they were well into professional life. And for them, computers were something you had to go to an institute to take a course for, not something you just started using intuitively, like subsequent generations did. Civil Service and Military: It is Gen-X that are the Babus now. All the Federal Secretaries in Islamabad, all the Chief Secretaries and Inspectors General of Police in the provinces (and elsewhere) are Gen-X. If it’s a federal level institution of some importance, it’s run by someone from this generation. The Intelligence Bureau? Gen-X. The Federal Investigation Agency? Gen-X. The SECP? Gen-X. The State Bank….you get the drift. All three military service chiefs are from Gen-X. All of the army chief’s staff generals at GHQ are Gen-X, as are all Corps Command-
Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir and Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Naveed Ashraf. Both men fall into the Gen-X bracket, as do the staff generals at GHQ, and the Vice and Rear Admirals at NHQ.
ADMINISTRATION
ers (and even Div Commanders, for that matter.) The Air Chief Marshall Zaheer Sidhu is Gen-X, as are his Air Marshalls in AHQ. Same goes for the naval chief and his Vice (and Rear) Admirals. Corporates and Banks: As discussed earlier, though the banking sector is the last holdout for the Boomers to be the boss, the other corporates are now firmly in the control of the Gen-X. But even in the banks, the Senior Executive Vice President levels (which means the group heads) are Gen-X. Of course, in the massive sethrun firms, where the grand old men are chairing the board, there would be a feeling amongst the Gen-X CEOs of not being fully empowered, but in this regard they would be no different from their Boomer predecessors: the seth calls the (bigger of the) shots; deal with it. Smaller Seths: Amongst the big-but-not-listed businesses across the country, though the Boomers are still reluctant to let go, the ones founded by Gen-X themselves are, to state the obvious, run by them. But there is also a middle ground: businesses not exactly founded by the Boomer, but taken to a scale several orbits higher by the Gen-X scion. Those would also be run by the son, especially since he was empowered enough to take it to such heights in the first place.
Millennials
Definition: Born between 1981 and 1996. In the US, from a purely demographic point of view, 1996 is where The Echo Boom ended. In Pakistan: The similarities-across-space within this cohort extend even further than those of Gen-X. For instance, the oldest ones were all
Irfan Nawaz Memon, a BS-19 officer of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), assumed the charge of the deputy commissioner Islamabad in April 2022. He is among the cadre of millennials in significant positions of power in the country. As DC of the federal capital, he effectively manages the city’s day to day administration.
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18 years old when they saw the calendar flip over to Y2K. Furthermore, while they did see digital technology growing up, they saw analog life as well. They saw the sheer boredom that spurs spontaneous activity, and maybe even learning. But they, as opposed to Gen-X, knew that user-facing tech was the sort of thing you had to learn by just using it intuitively. This is also the first time when demographics do enter the picture, even in Pakistan. Not coinciding with western patterns; in fact, quite the opposite of the situation in the US: the mid-Millenials were born at a time when Pakistan’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) started falling. The Millenials are also the first Pakistani generation to start internalising the idea of smaller families, at least in the urban areas, a stark contrast from their Boomer parents. Before proceeding further, I would like to say that, as opposed to the previous two age cohorts that we discussed, Millennials and those younger than them, due to their youth, have much variation within their age cohort. The current status of the absolute youngest Millennials would differ vastly from the oldest. This difference, of course, is most pronounced in Gen-Z, to whom we will come later. For lack of space, let us largely restrict our discussion to the older Millennials. Military: All over the world, the unit of the army is the battalion. This is the where-it’s-at of an armed force. Millennials are manning those very posts. Lieutenant Colonels, commanding battalions; Wing Commanders, commanding Squadrons; and Commanders, commanding vessels above a specific class, or squadrons. In the militaries of the world, these ranks are generally thought of as “the highest ranking field positions.” By field positions, we do not mean command positions, because those can go up all the way to generals commanding corps. No, we mean tactics and operations. A Wing Commander doesn’t just command a squadron, but also flies a fighter jet himself. Higher positions than these are, by and large, supervisory, except maybe in our navy. Civil Service: This is, by far, the most empowered segment. Those officers who had taken their CSS exams around twenty years ago, and are now in the Pakistan Administrative Service (the erstwhile District Management Group) and the Police Service of Pakistan, are running the administrative units of Pakistan i.e the districts. We, like a number of formerly colonised countries, have inherited “the Steel Frame of Empire” and, as per that, it is the mid-career professionals of the elite cadres that are empowered to run the districts themselves. After this stage, the powers of these government officers will fall considerably before rising again towards the end of their careers. This peculiar crest-and-trough isn’t quite there in any other line of work. A senior civil servant’s “when I was DC” shouldn’t be compared with a
senior military officer’s “when I was OC unit.” The latter is reminiscing because of nostalgia, but wouldn’t want to go back at all, while the former is missing the Uttay Rab, Thallay DC (“There’s God above, and the DC below”) dispensation of power of his heyday. The Commissioners that they are “deputy” to are only appellate authorities in revenue matters and perhaps a couple of other things. Other than out of courtesy, the DCs don’t have to follow orders, and the Commissioners know this. Because if the proverbial were to hit the fan, it is the DC whose head will be on the chopping block. This is in stark contrast to the military, where an air-force squadron commander knows that his base commander’s skin is very much in the game if something were to go wrong, and the chain of command does, in fact, require him to follow instructions to a T. The DPOs’ relationship with their DIG-rank RPOs is analogous to that of the one between DCs and Commissioners, except, after the Police Order of 2002, senior ranking officers can still get hands-on positions for big cities like Faisalabad or Hyderabad, and higher still for capital cities. But for the PAS, they will never quite have a duchy like this; arguably, even if they get to become Chief Secretary. Our nation lives in her districts. And these older Millennials run them. Corporates and Banks: Since there isn’t much by way of uniform ranking (other than in banking, somewhat) we can slot the individuals that have entered corporates and the banking sector through their highly competitive MTO programs, analogous to the CSS cadres, the older Millennials are, if things have gone well, leading individual units of their businesses. The term “team lead” can mean very different things in different organisations, so we will be very specific. To use a military analogy: yes a Major commands a Company, but that Company, and roughly two others, are within a Battalion, whose CO will be where the buck, even for this one Company, stops. That is, then, not what we are talking about. We are talking about roles where not only these executives are leading teams, but they are also relatively unsupervised. Older Millennials bankers would be Vice or Senior Vice Presidents by now, with some Executive Vice Presidents thrown in. As far as the job itself is concerned, an MTO that would have joined, say, the Corporate group of the bank, would have started as an Assistant Relationship Manager (ARM), working his way up to Relationship Manager (RM) and then Senior Relationship Manager (SRM.) . But by the time this individual would reach the aforementioned SVP position, he or she would have a team of SRMs working under them, and would be responsible for the due diligence and evaluation of a significant quantum of corporate financing all unto themselves. Even if a client corporation seeks a very large credit line, this wouldn’t be this SVPs first rodeo, having spent years watching their seniors handle the issue. This does not mean this is their money to spend; some tricky bits of financing are pushed upstairs for more-than-routine approvals, specially when their sheer size exceeds a particular level. Our corporate group’s batchmate who would have chosen to go to Retail Banking, would have become the Branch Manager of a large and prominent branch by now. Non-banking corporates and MNCs would have them managing portfolios or segments. There would be vast variations, of course, but to give an example, being the boss of the companywide implementation of a particular bit of tech or protocol would be the sort of thing that they would be doing. In advertising agencies, client servicing officers managing the account of a large-multiproduct conglomerate would be done at this stage, as would the management of one large (and crucial) client in the software export industry. Smaller Seths: Barring statistical outliers, they would be working for their Boomer parents. Having been handling operational issues for a while now, disagreements with their seth parents, if they have been
left unattended, would have metastasized into palpable friction. This is usually, if not always, over two issues: seeking financing and the upgradation of technology and protocols, but can extend beyond these, quite often mirroring family issues. Had it been an errant Gen-Z disagreeing with their Gen-X or Boomer seth parent, well-wishers would have been talking sense into the Gen-Z newby. But with Millenials, it is the Boomer seth that well-wishers try to talk sense into. The whole learn-to-let-go speech.
Gen-Z
By definition: Born between 1997 to 2012. The reasons for these starting and ending years, though also somewhat arbitrary in the previous cohorts, are even more so for Gen-Z. But, by now, demographers have taken to splitting generations in segments of roughly this quantum of years. Yes, this generation being “digital natives” is often mentioned, but parameters like being 10 years old when the iPhone came out are woefully inexact, specially for the third world, where even the well-to-do might not have been early adopters of the iPhone. The other definition of being a 4-year-old or younger when 9/11 happened is more valid because that implies having no conscious memory of that milestone event. In Pakistan: September 11th, 2001 is a good enough segue to Pakistan, where we were the centre-but-not-quite of the War on Terror. Pakistani Gen-Z does not have any memory other than that of “the Forever Wars.” Though precarious security conditions also take a toll on adults, the effects it has on children reverberate throughout their lives. In 2009, arguably one of Pakistan’s worst years, the older Gen-Z were just 12 years old. The disparity within Gen-Z, is even more pronounced than that within Millenials. The oldest Gen-Z is more than several years into being, say, an Assistant Commissioner, or on her way to becoming a Relationship Manager at a bank; the youngest, on the other hand, wouldn’t have taken their Matric/O Levels exams yet. On the issue of being Digital Natives, there is also a difference. As we discussed earlier, exposure to digital technology as a child seems a bit privileged in a country where there isn’t even running water or electricity available for a huge proportion of the populace. But even if we were to limit our discussion to the more well-to-do in the urban centres, there is still a memory of “Dial-Up Internet” in the minds of earlier Gen-Z, as opposed to their western counterparts. The mid-to-younger Gen-Z, at least in the urban areas, on the other hand, are always online. In this context, when we say “always online,” we do not mean to imply these individuals themselves are always using the internet; we mean that the house in which they are living in, is always connected.
Outside of traditional corporate routes, Pakistan has seen a bevy of entrepreneurs, startup founders, and innovators based both inside and outside the country. Many of these are from Gen-Z. Perhaps no one has captured headlines (or people’s imagination) in recent times more than Sualeh Asif, the co-founder Cursor, an AI code-generation startup that reportedly secured a $60 billion acquisition deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX back in April this year.
ADMINISTRATION
Military and Civil Service: The oldest Gen-Z who are officers in the military would have, or would be about to be, promoted to Major, Squadron Leader or Lieutenant Commander. They’re in for the grind on the ladder. These officers have not yet reached the steep drop-offs that start at the next stage in the pyramid structures of our armed forces; that will usually start when the bulk are passed over for promotion to the next rank. (The Damocles Sword, however, hangs over PAF officers from much earlier, from the academy days itself; if they want to remain pilots, that is.) The army officers might have seen action in the former tribal districts, southern KP or Balochistan, while the PAF officers might have seen action in Operations Sindoor and Bunyan-ul-Marsoos, but would have been too young to be hands-on during Operation Swift Retort. Amongst the PAS and PSP officers, the oldest Gen-Zs are already battle hardened, presumably having served in the boondocks at least once. Even if they haven’t served in the peripheries, the urban centres are a bit of a grind themselves. How empowered they are in their tehsil/ towns depends on their DC/DPO but it’s still not quite the (relatively) solo flight they will get at the district level. Corporates and Banking: For the eldest from Gen-Z entering these professions through the MTO route, they would be between a couple of years into the scheme of things, or still going through their training. For bankers gone into Corporate, they would be Assistant Relationship Managers. Those having gone into Retail, would be Assistant Branch Managers, while the older ones might even have become Branch Managers of a relatively smaller branch. They are all learning the ropes, getting in touch with the diction, and at least talking the talk. Smaller Seths: The older Gen-Z that have entered the big family businesses would have been back from their vanity degree abroad. The diploma decoration would most likely have no bearing on the business that they are returning to them. Those smarter still wouldn’t have gone abroad in the first place and would have hit the ground running. There is a disconnect, of course, between business theory and practice. And in Pakistan, even for the oldest Gen-Z working at their families’ firms, especially if they are at the apex level of the SME scale, that disconnect specifically plays out in cash flow and credit issues. For clients not paying up for goods sold and services rendered and the recovery process being long and cumbersome, is something that takes time to get used to. Even if they haven’t studied or worked abroad and internalised western business ethics, they wouldn’t have known of “payment phassi hui hai” issues in their unburdened, privileged schooldays. However, this is something these seth scions conveniently ignore when the shoe is on the other foot and it is they themselves are withholding payments to their own vendors. This and the inevitable issue of not being frugal in temperament enough for the titular seth himself.
Where do we go from here?
The Bard himself laid out the seven stages of a man: the Infant, Schoolboy, Lover, Soldier, Justice, Pantaloon and Dotage. Barring outliers (of whom there are many) these ages track well to understand things. Teenagers will always be teenagers. So will twenty-somethings starting out. As will those older, who are seeing actual power for the first time. As will parents worrying about their kids. The Wheel of Time keeps moving in circles. But, critically for our discussion: teenagers in the 1950s were distinctly different from the teenagers of the early 2010s. And though the last 200 years have seen immense and transformative technological changes, at our current stage in time, specially with the rise of AI, the sheer rate of change is absolutely massive. Which makes it
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difficult for generations to understand each other. While we might pedantically scoff at the misuse of the term “Boomer,” we actually see Gen Alpha use it disparagingly against even the younger members of Gen-Z, who are befuddled at the prospect of somehow being thought of as out of touch. Let us not make the mistake of a blind celebration of Gen-Z; there’s too much of that going about, often borne out of a desire to appeal to the demographic. That is reductive and hamfisted. God knows there have been a series of debacles in recent business and startup history, which, if the Boomers were in charge, wouldn’t have happened. On the governance front, let us look at the folk pretty much steering policy: Gen-X, not Boomers. As mentioned earlier, the clarification hastily offered by Gen-Z, when one shows them the exact same years of the Boomer generation, is that by the term, they mean anyone old who can’t use tech. Though that case can very much be made, what exactly do they mean by this? Surely, they do not mean to imply Gen-X can’t handle e-mail. No, comes the answer; but that would be setting the bar too low. We mean stuff like cryptocurrency and blockchain. Well, one would venture that most Millennials haven’t quite figured out cryptocurrency either. Neither does - and this has to be emphasised - Gen-Z. Dabbling in trading, or even having made money off it, does not imply a knowledge of the topic. Though this writer must admit here a bias against cryptocurrency to begin with - another topic for another time. One other example of the tech front is how the older generations are stuck on legacy media, while the younger lot are consuming news online and through social media. That, ironically, is an out-of-touch take. One of the very specific problems facing democracies of the world is that the Boomers, who vote higher in proportion, are easily taken in by online propaganda, specially of the hypernationalist, majoritarian and religious sort. Facebook, WhatsApp and fringe YouTubers are increasingly becoming their source of information. Too much, not too little. So any apprehension on that front is, at best, not articulated clearly enough. We discount the effects of path dependency and institutional inertia. For example, yes, we do have an Information Service as a government cadre, and yes, the cadre does deal with newspapers (sometimes ones with laughably low circulation numbers), TV and radio outlets. But all that is because of The Way Things Have Been Done. The oldest Gen-Z, who are already Information Officers with some years of experience, would very much be a part of the system, and would be hungrily trying to outperform each other in these very outdated performance metrics. We can attempt to improve the civil service cadres, but it would be ridiculous to interpret that as putting Gen-Z in charge. Those who are in the system have little incentive to change it. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, goes the saying. In fact, if the social media accounts of Gen-Z civil servants are anything to go by, they’re palpably more out of a Kipling book than their Millennial seniors. What Gen-Z has going for it is a total lack of patience for “work for work’s sake.” They are generally outcome-driven, not system-driven, even if they might get confused between the two from time to time. Given some independence, they are quicker on their feet and can shake things up. They not only know how to use technology, but understand its operational purpose. We missed the bus with the Boomers when Staff College and mid-career NIBAF IT courses focused on teaching senior officers how to operate a PC rather than how to leverage technology strategically. Having a senior officer know how to type an email did little for their organization; what would have been transformative was teaching them how to initiate, say, nationwide database digitization. Gen-Z has clarity on that front. They prioritize transparency and user experience design above administrative orthodox. How this can be leveraged to face the problems of the future is crucial. After all, not long ago, the Millennials had a similar spark in their eyes and a spring in their step... n
ADMINISTRATION
OPINION
Muhammad Azfar Ahsan
Pakistan Needs a Pause
requires reform, but whether it possesses the political maturity, institutional discipline and national resolve to implement it. The country does not lack policy recommendations, expert reports or reform blueprints. Across governments, public institutions, academia, think tanks and the private sector, there is broad understanding akistan's governance architecture has once again of what needs to change. What remains elusive is the become the focus of an intense national debate. Across resolve to act. Implementation repeatedly falters because the country, sharply differing views have emerged political instability disrupts continuity, institutions on whether the existing system remains capable of operate in silos, vested interests resist reform, institudelivering effective governance, sustaining developtional capability often falls short of the complexity of ment and meeting the aspirations of nearly 260 million people in the challenges we face, and governance remains trapped an increasingly complex, competitive and interconnected world. in short-term firefighting rather than long-term instituPredictably, the debate has generated competing narratives, tion building. The defining challenge of this generation political point-scoring and familiar blame games. Yet beyond the is therefore not to discover new solutions, but to build noise lies a far more consequential question: have we reached a a state capable of implementing the solutions it already point where incremental adjustments are no longer sufficient, and possesses. where a deeper national conversation about the future of the state It is in this context that I believe "Pakistan needs has become imperative? a pause." Not a pause in governance, democracy or ecoFor me, the debate itself is far more important than the nomic activity, but a pause for reflection, reassessment statement that triggered it. These concerns are not new. Many of and strategic realignment. A pause that enables the state, us have been raising them consistently for years. Through policy its institutions and all national stakeholders to step back dialogues, sustained engagement with decision-makers, conferfrom the pressures of perpetual crisis management and ences, books and opinion pieces, we have argued that Pakistan's confront more fundamental questions. Are our goverchallenges are not merely economic or political; they are fundanance structures fit for purpose? Are our institutions mentally institutional. More importantly, these engagements have equipped to serve a country of Pakistan's scale and comnever been confined to diagnosing problems. They have consisplexity? Have our political, administrative and economtently advanced practical, evidence-based pathways for reform. ic systems evolved at the same pace as the challenges The recurring challenge has never been a shortage of ideas; it has confronting them? been our inability to translate those ideas into sustained impleSuch a pause should never be mistaken for an admentation. mission of failure. Confident nations periodically review Pakistan's challenge today is no longer diagnostic; it is their institutions, recalibrate their priorities and moderndecisional. The debate before us is therefore not whether Pakistan ize their governance frameworks in response to changing demographic, technological and geopolitical realities. Institutional renewal is not a sign of weakness; it is a defining characteristic of resilient and forward-looking states. Pakistan should have the confidence to undertake Writer is a public policy advocate, business a similar exercise, not because circumstances have compelled it, but because its strategist, and former Pakistan’s Minister long-term national interest demands it. for Investment and Chairman of the Board Perhaps the greatest deficit, however, is not one of ideas but of execution. of Investment. He is a strategic advisor Pakistan has produced no shortage of commissions, reform agendas, expert reports to leading corporate entities, focusing on and policy recommendations. Governments, universities, think tanks, civil serbusiness policy, investment facilitation, and vants, business leaders and development practitioners have collectively generated leadership branding. He writes frequently an extensive body of knowledge on virtually every major national challenge. Our on the economy, governance, and society. recurring failure has not been intellectual; it has been institutional. Good ideas
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COMMENT
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rarely become enduring public policy because implementation is repeatedly interrupted before reform can mature into lasting change. Governance should be measured not by processes initiated or meetings held, but by institutions strengthened, services delivered and outcomes achieved. Implementation repeatedly falters because political instability interrupts continuity, institutions too often operate in isolation, vested interests resist change, institutional capability frequently falls short of the complexity of the challenges confronting the country, and governance remains trapped in short-term firefighting rather than long-term institution building. State institutions earn legitimacy not through authority alone, but through measurable performance. No governance architecture can realize its full potential without the consistent application of the rule of law. It is the foundation upon which institutional credibility, investor confidence, economic competitiveness and public trust are built. Where the rule of law prevails, institutions gain legitimacy, markets become more predictable, citizens gain confidence in the state and investors acquire the certainty required to commit long-term capital. The rule of law is, therefore, not merely a legal principle; it is an essential institution of national development. Recognizing these realities is not an exercise in pessimism; it is the beginning of national renewal. Nations transform not by denying structural weaknesses, but by confronting them honestly, strengthening institutions patiently and replacing a culture of perpetual crisis management with one of long-term nation building. Recent geopolitical developments have also reminded us of an important truth: Pakistan possesses strengths that our domestic discourse often underestimates. During a period of heightened regional tensions, the country demonstrated credible defense capability, diplomatic maturity and the ability to engage constructively with major regional and global stakeholders. Those achievements reaffirmed that, when national purpose is aligned, Pakistan's institutions are capable of responding effectively to the most complex strategic challenges. Yet they also expose the missing pillar of our national strategy. The enduring strength of modern states rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars: "Defense, Diplomacy and Development". Defense safeguards sovereignty. Diplomacy advances national interests. Development, however, determines whether a nation can transform security, stability and international credibility into prosperity, opportunity and a higher quality of life for its people. In that sense, development is not
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simply another public policy objective; it is the highest expression of national security because it strengthens the economic, institutional and human foundations upon which enduring national power ultimately rests. Development must therefore be understood in its broadest sense. It is reflected not only in economic growth, but in the quality of education, human capital, scientific research, technological capability, productive employment, competitive exports, investment confidence, healthcare, the justice system and public institutions capable of delivering with competence, transparency and consistency. It is development that transforms demographic potential into productive capacity, economic strength into strategic influence and national aspiration into measurable progress. Measured against these standards, Pakistan's challenge becomes unmistakable. Nearly 28 million children remain out of school, weakening the country's future human capital. Investment remains well below potential, exports have yet to reflect the scale of Pakistan's economy, and continued dependence on external borrowing constrains strategic choices. Persistent poverty, inflation, regional disparities and deteriorating security conditions in parts of the country further demonstrate that these are not isolated policy failures; they are symptoms of deeper structural weaknesses that no short-term intervention can resolve. Addressing those weaknesses also requires an honest conversation about elite capture, not as a political accusation, but as an institutional reality recognised throughout governance literature. Every society has political, institutional, economic and intellectual elites. Their existence is both natural and necessary. The defining question is whether those centers of influence primarily serve the national interest or gradually become invested in preserving arrangements that discourage competition, innovation, merit and reform. When influence becomes detached from accountability and the status quo becomes more rewarding than change, development inevitably slows and institutions lose both agility and public confidence. This should not be interpreted as a criticism of any single institution or stakeholder. Politics, the civil service, the armed forces, the judiciary, business, academia, the media and civil society all share responsibility for strengthening the Republic. Sustainable reform cannot be built upon exclusion or perpetual blame. It requires equal responsibility, equal opportunity and a shared commitment to Pakistan's future. Lasting national renewal is not the responsibility of one institution; it is the shared responsibility of the state and society. Ultimately, Pakistan's competitiveness
in the decades ahead will depend not only on the credibility of its defense or the effectiveness of its diplomacy, but on whether Development becomes the organizing principle of the state. Nations that invest in their people, strengthen their institutions, uphold the rule of law and create confidence for enterprise do more than achieving economic growth; they build resilient societies, competitive economies and enduring strategic influence. That is the direction Pakistan must now choose with clarity, consistency and confidence. If Pakistan's challenges are structural, then our response must also be structural. A pause should therefore become the beginning of a serious national conversation rather than an end in itself. Its purpose is not to suspend governance but to create the political, institutional and intellectual space required for reflection, reassessment and strategic realignment. Nations that aspire to long-term success periodically review their governance architecture to ensure it remains capable of responding to changing demographic, economic, technological and geopolitical realities. Pakistan should have the confidence to do the same. That conversation must include every stakeholder with a meaningful role in the Republic's future: political leadership, constitutional institutions, the armed forces, the civil service, the private sector, academia, the judiciary, the media, civil society and the Pakistani diaspora. The objective should not be to negotiate political advantage or reopen constitutional controversies. It should be to forge a "National Renewal Compact," a shared national understanding that protects Pakistan's strategic priorities from the disruption of recurring political cycles while fully respecting democratic politics, constitutional order and institutional balance. Great nations do not eliminate political competition; they ensure that national priorities endure beyond it. Such a compact should be anchored in a development strategy measured in decades rather than electoral terms. Pakistan's future cannot be planned one government at a time. It requires a long-term national vision that survives political transitions and provides continuity in education, institutional reform, fiscal responsibility, exports, investment, innovation, climate resilience, digital transformation and human capital. Policy continuity is not a political concession; it is a prerequisite for national credibility and sustained national progress. The same principle applies to governance. Pakistan should restore empowered local governments as the constitutional foundation of democratic governance and effective public service delivery. Strong local
institutions create stronger provinces, and stronger provinces strengthen the federation. Equally, the country should encourage a mature, evidence-based national conversation on administrative restructuring, including additional provinces where demographic, administrative and governance considerations justify such reforms. These questions should neither be politicized nor feared. They should be examined objectively through the lens of administrative efficiency, equitable development, effective public service delivery and the long-term strength of the federation. Pakistan's strengths remain far greater than its weaknesses. A young population, entrepreneurial talent, strategic geography, abundant natural resources and growing international relevance provide foundations that many nations would envy. The challenge
before us is not a lack of opportunity; it is our collective ability to build institutions capable of converting opportunity into enduring national progress. For too long, Pakistan has devoted its energies to managing decline rather than creating development. The purpose of this pause is to reverse that trajectory and restore development as the organizing principle of the state. I remain optimistic because history consistently demonstrates that nations willing to examine themselves honestly, reform their institutions patiently and unite around a shared national purpose emerge stronger from periods of uncertainty. Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity. The next chapter of our national journey should be defined by institutional excellence, policy continuity, the rule of law, empowered
local governance, equal responsibility, equal opportunity and an unwavering commitment to development. Pakistan does not need a pause because it lacks resilience. It needs a pause because it possesses too much potential to continue managing decline instead of creating progress. The true measure of leadership is not merely the ability to respond to crises, but the wisdom to prevent them. The true measure of a state is not the strength of its intentions, but the strength of its institutions, the credibility of its governance and its capacity to implement a shared national vision. History will judge this generation not by the debates it inherited, but by the institutions it had the wisdom to reform and the future it had the courage to build. That, ultimately, is why "Pakistan needs a pause."
COMMENT
“Pakistan is a frontier market for enterprise AI but, its lack of infrastructure is a problem”, SAP President SAP’s EMEA head Augusta Spinelli sees a young, curious country with a real shot at the next decade of enterprise technology but the numbers on the ground tell a more complicated story By Shahnawaz Ali
H
er job is to sell enterprise software across 89 countries, a region stretching from the Nordics through Africa to the Middle East. But Profit’s exclusive interview with SAP EMEA president, Augusta Spinelli felt closer to a conversation with an economist who has a grip over Pakistan’s technology struggles. One does not have to be an expert to see what is wrong with Pakistan’s tech ecosystem, which as it so happens, she is. For example, talking about artificial intelligence she places the utmost focus on infrastructure first, then data, then governance, and only then the technology everyone actually wants to talk about. “You need strong and reliable digital infrastructure, in the country or beyond,” she said, when asked what separates markets that have made the leap to cloud and AI from markets, like Pakistan, that are still finding their footing. “You needed the capability to have and to maintain a very trusted data layer. In the new era, everything is about data.” It is a sequencing argument, and also a fairly precise diagnosis of where Pakistan currently sits. The country has ambition. It has, by Spinelli’s own account, a genuinely young and curious population. What it does not yet have, on evidence, is the groundwork those ambitions need to stand on.
The infrastructure problem
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AP’s (which rather boringly stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) has a very simple pitch. It is a global software company that creates Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to help businesses manage operations and customer relations. They sell autonomous agents, AI-embedded enterprise systems and a “business data cloud” knitting together a company’s entire operation, as a
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story about software. And that redirection lands harder in Pakistan than it might in, say, Germany or the UAE, two markets within Spinelli’s own portfolio. A mixed-methods study of the country’s SME sector, surveying 910 businesses and conducting 48 interviews across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh between October 2025 and February 2026, found that Pakistan’s 3.3 million SMEs, which together generate 40 % of the country’s GDP, show just 12 percent ERP adoption and a mere 3 percent penetration of Industry 4.0 technologies. The researchers traced much of that shortfall to something very basic. Average internet speeds of 4.2 Mbps and power outages running close to 9.2 hours a day, which together explained 42% of the variance in whether a business adopted digital tools at all. Statistical modelling in the same study found that infrastructure constraints outweighed even traditional “is this software useful to me” perceptions in determining adoption. In other words, Pakistani SMEs are not unconvinced, they are just unconnected, or under-powered, often both. That is the layer Spinelli is pointing at when she talks about reliable infrastructure as a precondition rather than a nice-to-have. The World Bank’s own assessment of Pakistan’s digital readiness reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle, noting that closing the country’s connectivity gaps will require not just investment but better coordination between federal and provincial authorities — a reminder that Pakistan’s infrastructure gap is not purely a funding problem. It is also, in part, a coordination problem between layers of government that don’t always move in step.
Data, trust, and the gap between consumer AI and enterprise AI
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f infrastructure is the foundation, Spinelli’s next layer up is data. Responding to a question regarding data, she asked why is it that the AI moment feels different now
than it did even two years ago. She draws a sharp line between AI as most people encounter it and AI as a company needs it to function. “When you interrogate ChatGPT as a private citizen and ask for information, maybe it’s not 100 % accurate or complete. But for you, it’s more of an insight,” she said. “In a business, when you need to make an investment decision, you need a very precise view on your business, your stocks, your finance. You need a system that provides insights in a traceable manner, in a compliant manner.” That distinction, consumer AI as insight, enterprise AI as something that has to be auditable, is the conceptual core of what SAP now markets as the “autonomous enterprise,” and it is also why Spinelli circles back, unprompted, to SAP’s own infrastructure investment in this area. A platform called Business Data Cloud, now folded into the company’s broader AI platform, designed to give companies a clean, structured layer for both SAP and non-SAP data. Spinelli also mentions that the company has struck partnerships with major data infrastructure players, including Databricks, to extend that layer beyond its own ecosystem. The argument generalizes well past SAP’s product line. Any country trying to build AI-driven public or enterprise services runs into the same constraint. That an AI system is only as trustworthy as the data feeding it, and data is only trustworthy if there is a clear governance structure determining who controls it, where it lives, and who is allowed to touch it. Pakistan does not yet have that structure settled in law. The country currently has no enacted data protection legislation comparable to international standards, relying instead on the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 amended to function as a make-shift data governance framework. The pending Personal Data Protection Act 2025 would introduce real compliance obligations on businesses, with penalties of up to $2 million for violations, but in its current draft form keeps state agencies largely exempt from those same obligations, a
structural asymmetry that legal analysts and rights groups alike have flagged as undermining the bill’s credibility as genuine governance rather than a tool primarily aimed at controlling private actors. Until something like it actually passes, the “trusted data layer” Spinelli describes as foundational remains, in Pakistan’s case, a draft rather than an institution.
Pakistan government’s role
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ressed on what governments specifically need to get right, Spinelli chose her words carefully. “Public institutions, governments that can set the boundaries and give guidelines, are extremely important,” she said. “I am aware that in the last couple of years, in Pakistan, you have been very active in establishing and publishing a system of rules that is supposed to promote a clear way of transforming.” “What is important is that these things should be seen in a systematic manner, in a framework, and not as individual standalone projects, but as part of a major framework, in which every component makes sense.” It is a diplomatic sentence doing some less diplomatic work. It credits Pakistan with activity while questioning whether that activity adds up to any coherence. And the record supports both halves of her reading. On the side of momentum, Pakistan’s National AI Policy, approved by the federal cabinet in 2025, was explicitly designed to integrate with a cluster of adjacent frameworks. The National Cyber Security Policy, the Cloud First Policy, the Personal Data Protection Bill, the Digital Pakistan Policy, and the Digital Nation Pakistan Act are close to the “major framework” thinking Spinelli describes, at least as a stated intention. But the policy arrives with specific, cost commitments: training one million AI experts by 2030, launching dedicated AI Innovation and Venture Funds, and rolling out 1,000 homegrown AI products within five years. Drafting reportedly pulled in a genuinely wide set of institutions such as the Higher Education Commission, the FBR, the telecom regulator PTA, provincial IT boards, universities, and industry bodies including the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This number of institutions, at least on paper, is closer to the multi-stakeholder coordination enterprise transformation tends to require. Meanwhile on the side of the gap, the law meant to anchor all of it has not caught up to the vision document describing it. No comprehensive AI-specific legislation yet exists, and the policy currently operates alongside PECA, a statute built for a different purpose altogether.
Pakistan’s Parliament also amended PECA in early 2025 to criminalise the spread of “false or fake information,” carrying penalties of up to three years in prison, and created a new Social Media Protection Authority with the power to block or remove content on grounds rights groups have described as “vaguely defined”.
Making an argument for skills
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here was one place where Spinelli’s optimism about Pakistan felt genuinely unprompted rather than diplomatically required, it was on the question of people. “Every country, every company will have to face a transformation,” she said, asked to look five years out. “The key element, regardless of where a country sits today in technology maturity, is skills and how fast the skills can evolve. I believe Pakistan is in a good position for one reason, you have a very young population, so many people at university. The curiosity of the young generation can make the difference.” It is worth taking that claim and putting a number against it, because the SME study cited earlier did exactly that. Its researchers modelled what closing Pakistan’s digital adoption gap would actually be worth: a difference-in-differences analysis of 187 matched adopters found a 23.4 percent productivity gain attributable to digital transformation, and econometric projections suggested a PKR 4.2 trillion uplift to GDP, an 18 percent increase, if adoption reached 30 percent nationally, requiring an estimated PKR 850 billion in investment with a projected 28-month payback period. Whatever one makes of the precision implied by numbers like these, the direction is unambiguous. The upside of closing Pakistan’s skills and infrastructure gap is transformative, which is presumably part of why Pakistan’s own AI Policy leans so heavily on the same demographic argument Spinelli makes, built around the fact that more than 60 percent of the population is under 30.
Beyond Pakistan: where SAP is going
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he infrastructure and skills conversation is, of course, only one thread of a much larger corporate story Spinelli is in the middle of. SAP recently launched what it calls the Autonomous Enterprise at its annual Sapphire event just weeks before this interview, a vision in which AI agents embedded inside enterprise systems don’t just analyse data but take action on it, end to end, across finance, procurement, supply chain, and HR, inside compliance boundaries the business sets itself.
When asked what distinguishes SAP’s agents from competitors who have had agentic AI in the market for two years or more, Spinelli went straight to the data layer. “An SAP agent, built within SAP’s platform, understands the semantic meaning of the data. Everything is about compliance, security, approval metrics,” she said. “You do not want a system in which everybody can see everything.” On the LLMs powering it, a question every enterprise AI vendor is being pressed on right now, she was deliberately flat: “We are neutral. We are not in the business of producing LLMs. We are in the business of leveraging the capabilities that are in the market.” On the question of resilience raised in the context of the AWS outage that cascaded through businesses globally, she was similarly composed. “Business continuity is at the foundation,” she said. “Since the very beginning, 54 years ago when the company was founded, the key element has been to secure for customers business continuity. Cloud has been proven as the infrastructure that can secure it. We have data centers, we have disaster recovery, designed in a way to make customers confident that even in the case of unpredictable events, their business continuity is protected.” She noted that across her 89-country region, interest in distributed geographies and longer-term disaster recovery investments has risen materially a trend she expects to continue regardless of whether any particular crisis resolves. On sustainability, increasingly bundled into the same enterprise compliance conversation as data governance, she was blunt about the shift in how serious companies are treating it: “Sustainability is not just a reporting requirement. It’s an operating model. It’s a core business discipline, not just a report or a PowerPoint produced every six months.” What ties all of this back to Pakistan, in the end, is the commitment. SAP has operated in the country since 2006, when no other major global player is ready to. Through a partner-led model in which thousands of certified local consultants carry the company’s technology into the market. “We are here to stay,” Spinelli said, without particular elaboration, the kind of sentence a visiting executive could easily say and mean very little by. But she had, over the course of the conversation, said enough about what “staying” actually requires, the infrastructure investment, the data governance, the coherent regulatory framework, the trained workforce, that the phrase carried more content than it might have on its own. Pakistan, on her account, is a market with the demographic energy to move fast and the policy momentum to move deliberately. Whether those two things arrive in the right order, and in time for each other, is the question the next two or three years will answer. n
OPINION
Mohsin Leghari
Sequencing the Wheat Reform Before November
Wheat has climbed from about Rs 3,300 in January to Rs 4,700 per 40 kilograms today. Market participants point to lower yields, some farmer stock-holding, urban hoarding and investment capital entering storage. They are right. But behaviour is the symptom. The disease is institutional. And the window to treat it closes before November, when the next crop's seed goes into the ground. The cause is withdrawal without replacement. The crisis did not begin with a wrong policy. It began with a The August wheat import bill is the right policy executed in the wrong sequence. The old procurement system was fiscally unsustainable; the food-sector accumulated invoice for three harvests of circular debt alone made the case for reform unanswerable. disorderly transition. The next window closes The withdrawal was accelerated under IMF-supported conditionality. The direction was defensible. The sequencing when the seed goes into the ground was not. Three harvests ran under three frameworks. In 2024, akistan is importing wheat three months after a harvest procurement stopped as imports flooded a stocked market. officially estimated at 29.8 million tonnes. The Cereal AssoIn 2025, an electronic warehouse receipt system launched ciation of Pakistan puts the real figure closer to 26 million, without the legal and financial foundations that give receipts and calls the government's number inaccurate. The dispute value. In 2026, about a dozen companies were notified as a does not resolve the puzzle. It relocates it. Even at the procurement system while banks, collateral rights and storlower estimate, domestic production covers the country's age rules were still being negotiated in May. What Punjab needs; the question of why the state is still buying abroad survives the created was not deregulation. It was withdrawal without argument over decimal points. replacement. The federal government has approved one million tonnes through When prices rose, the state reverted to its oldest tools: the Trading Corporation of Pakistan. Sindh has cleared a further half district price caps, raids on stocks and curbs on inter-proa million through the same channel. Punjab, the surplus province, vincial movement. Deregulation by notification, re-regulawants a million tonnes of its own and has not decided whether to call tion by raid. That is not a policy. It is a mood. it import or entitlement, evidence that the state itself can no longer tell The result is paying in dollars what we refused to pay the difference between growing wheat and importing it. The same ECC in rupees. In April, the farmer without liquidity, storage or meeting that approved the TCP import also released 1.2 million tonnes credit sold at Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,200 against a benchmark of Rs of PASSCO's own warehouse stock to the provinces, more grain than 3,500. By late July the same grain traded above Rs 4,500. The the fresh import itself. A reserve corporation sitting on more wheat than spread went to those with the one quality the small farmer the country is now buying abroad is not a supply failure. It is a distribucannot afford: the ability to wait. tion failure inside the state's own warehouses. The state then opened the wallet it had closed on its own farmers. Imported wheat lands at about Rs 3,800 per bag, paid in dollars, before upcountry transportation and handling add on to it. Domestic procurement at Rs 3,500 in rupees was declared unaffordable. A one-million-tonne The author is former Minister of Irrigation import approaches $280 million; the full 2.55 million tonnes now on the table Punjab, a former Senator and Member of nationally, the federal tranche, Sindh's half million and Punjab's own million still the National Assembly. He is currently pending, pushes the bill toward $700 million. When the seller is Pakistani, the affiliated with UNDP as Senior Water money is unavailable. When the seller is foreign, the dollars appear. Sector Expert and has worked with the EU/ The consequences are distress entering the soil and the ledger. Farmers who GIZ on parliamentary capacity building. He lost money last year cut fertilizer application, and yields fell an estimated three to five writes in his personal capacity and does maunds per acre by field reports from farmer organisations. The prior season's distress not represent any past or current affiliated already cut acreage by close to nine hundred thousand acres, and this year's contracorganisation.
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tion went the same direction, toward oilseeds with no processing or storage architecture. The deeper reason is the entrenchment of the aarhti system. Most smallholders do not borrow from banks; they rely on the commission agent for seed, fertiliser and diesel, and must sell to him at harvest to clear the debt at whatever price he dictates. He needs credit for his next crop. When the state withdraws without a credible alternative, it does not create a free market. It hands a monopsony to the middleman. The aarhti is not a villain; he is a rational actor filling an institutional void. Raiding his godown does not free the farmer from his ledger. You cannot raid your way out of an institutional void. The way forward is to separate must from should. The emerging expert consensus rests on unrestricted exports at harvest, a large market-priced strategic reserve and legitimised private stockists. Each deserves engagement, and each fails without sequencing. Export parity is a number in Islamabad; the farmer sells in his district. A reserve of the order of four million tonnes is the right instrument, but it must arrive before the price is set; a buyer who comes in June stabilises nothing. Stockists are legitimate only with registered stocks, published price reporting and enforceable warehouse standards. And the farmer needs his own counterweight, because a market in which only one side can afford to wait is an
auction in which the seller is the lot. So before November, hold each item to its own clock. The irreducible minimum, without which the cycle simply repeats. The State Bank should direct banks to lend against verified digital warehouse receipts at the village level, letting a farmer deposit his crop, take a bridge loan and clear the aarhti's ledger while keeping ownership of his grain. For the minority with formal crop loans, extend maturities by 90 days to align repayment with the marketing cycle, with a partial provincial guarantee absorbing the incremental risk banks would otherwise price in. Neither needs new legislation; both are close to costless to the exchequer; both break the compulsion of the distress sale. This is the floor. Alongside it, aggregator financing must be settled before the harvest window opens; a procurement system still being negotiated in May is not a system, it is a negotiation that happens to involve wheat. And PASSCO must be ready to release reserves into deficit provinces without waiting for panic to trigger the same restrictions again. The institutional upgrade should happen before sowing, but its absence does not block the minimum. Integrate the aarhti into a regulated digital e-mandi with transparent margins. License aggregators mandated to pay by instant digital transfer. Tie compensation to the spread between farmgate price and bench-
mark, treating the benchmark as a reference for incentives, not a floor the state defends by fiat. If this slips past November, the liquidity bridge still protects the farmer, but only temporarily; the aarhti reasserts his monopoly next season and the crisis returns with greater force. The upgrade is the difference between surviving one harvest and building a system that survives ten. The structural build must begin now. Launch village-level storage pilots under a credible regulatory framework with independent oversight. This is a three-to-five-year institutional project. Precisely because it will take years, it must begin now. Storage is the only permanent cure for the distress sale. The verdict will be delivered in November. The old system was fiscally unsustainable; no honest reformer mourns its passing. But the state never bought everything. It was the market's anchor, stepping in to stabilise prices and check the middleman's power. Today the state has abandoned that anchor without building a replacement. Between the state that anchors the market and the state that abandons it, there is a third path: the state that builds the rails before it lets the train run. In November the farmer will decide what to plant, remembering April, not this debate. If the minimum is not fixed before then, 2027 opens the way the last three seasons did: grain ready, system elsewhere, the aarhti holding the only pen that matters. n
OPINION
Emergent Media believes marketing’s next employees won’t be humans. Is the industry convinced? By Taimoor Hassan
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or nearly two decades, agencies hired media planners, campaign managers, SEO specialists, analysts and community managers to navigate increasingly complex advertising systems. Brands paid for expertise in Google’s search algorithms, Meta’s advertising engine and the performance dashboards accompanying each campaign. Then artificial intelligence arrived. At first, it wrote copy, generated images and summarised reports. Soon it was creating advertising assets, analysing customer journeys and producing campaign recommendations. Now, startups believe it can replace entire operational functions within marketing departments. One is Emergent Media, a UAE-based digital transformation and marketing agency founded by Roshan Ejaz, Ahsan Khan, Faisal Ayub and Khurram Saleem, with a Lahore office. Its Emergent OS, launched last month, is an agentic operating system comprising three AI agents designed to automate social media management, website optimisation and digital media buying. Unlike chatbots that respond to prompts, these agents are intended to observe, analyse and execute continuously, with humans supervising final decisions. The proposition divides the industry. Supporters say machines can handle repetitive, data-heavy work faster and more consistently; critics contend that marketing still depends on human judgement, creativity and relationships. The debate extends beyond one startup: can AI genuinely become a digital marketer, or merely a sophisticated assistant?
Marketing’s commoditisation problem
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oshan Ejaz, co-founder and CEO of Emergent Media, traces the company’s journey back to a structural shift in digital advertising itself. “Over time, as digital media evolved, we realised things were becoming very commoditised,” he says. As campaigns moved in-house and advertising platforms became more sophisticated, running them ceased to be a specialised agency capability. Agencies once differentiated themselves through media-planning expertise, and later through audience targeting. Large groups invested heavily in specialists who could extract marginal efficiencies from Facebook and Google.
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Meta’s machine-learning systems now assess not only audience targeting but creative diversity, limiting reach when advertisements appear too similar. “The amount of content required to achieve efficiency became enormous,” Ejaz explains. Traditional production workflows could not keep pace with platforms demanding hundreds of creative variations tailored for increasingly segmented audiences. Agencies struggled with cost, turnaround times and scale. Emergent first established a generative AI studio to produce content at scale. But people still had to transfer information between tools, analyse dashboards and perform routine tasks. The company therefore began building autonomous agents to execute marketing workflows. “The world is moving towards automation,” Ejaz says. “We want humans to spend their time on more intelligent and strategic work rather than routine operational tasks. We believe agents can perform those operational tasks better, while humans should focus on strategy.” That philosophy underpins all three of Emergent’s AI agents. The question is whether each can actually deliver. The first, called Engage, attempts to become an organisation’s social media manager. The second, Webcare, oversees website optimisation, technical SEO and analytics. The third, Boost, manages digital advertising campaigns across Meta and Google’s advertising ecosystem. Each standalone agent costs roughly Rs100,000 a month, though clients can subscribe to the full operating system. Customers include brands building in-house capabilities and agencies automating parts of their workflows. Whether the agents can automate work now performed by thousands of professionals depends on the function.
Engage: Can AI become your social media manager?
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ommunity management has quietly become one of digital marketing’s most labour-intensive functions. Large brands maintain dedicated teams responsible for publishing content, responding to customer queries, handling complaints and keeping dozens of social channels active throughout the day. According to Ejaz, much of that workload consists of repeatable processes rather than
creative decision-making. “The Engage Agent performs all of those tasks,” he says. Users specify the content they want; the platform generates and schedules it, monitors conversations and responds in real time. Companies can upload proprietary knowledge bases covering products, policies and brand guidelines. In theory, it functions like a social media manager who never sleeps. The attraction is obvious. For organisations operating across multiple time zones, or simply handling thousands of customer interactions every day, the economics begin to change rapidly. A single AI agent can theoretically manage volumes that would otherwise require several employees working in shifts. Here, however, an experienced media executive who requested anonymity sees AI’s greatest limitation. “At the end of the day, it’s responding based on prompts,” he says. “If somebody leaves an abusive comment, the AI will probably reply with something polite like, ‘Thank you for your feedback. We respect your point of view.’ Anyone reading that immediately knows it wasn’t written by a human.” If someone mocked his company’s branding, he says, a human community manager might respond with wit, humour or cultural context, something spontaneous enough to reshape the conversation rather than simply acknowledge it. “That’s the kind of answer a human gives,” he says. “A machine can’t think like that.” But his criticism extends beyond tone. Modern social media management, he argues, has evolved into customer relationship management. If a customer complains about receiving a defective product, merely apologising is not enough. The response often requires refunds, escalation to customer service or commercial discretion. “Engagement isn’t just replying to comments,” he says. “It’s customer relationship management in the modern era. That’s one area where I’d never compromise.” Ejaz acknowledges that concern to some extent. Unlike fully autonomous AI systems, Emergent intentionally keeps humans involved in critical decisions. Knowledge bases can be customised, workflows configured and responses supervised where necessary. The company’s objective, he argues, is not to remove humans from communication altogether but to eliminate repetitive operational work while allowing marketers to intervene where judgement matters.
Between automation and originality
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mair, a digital marketing executive who has spent nearly 15 years managing campaigns across the UAE and Qatar, including work on Qatar Tourism’s FIFA World Cup campaigns, occupies a more nuanced middle ground. He agrees that AI can substantially improve social media operations but not because it suddenly possesses human creativity. Instead, he believes AI excels at processing information. He points to platforms like Brandwatch, which already monitor conversations across websites and social networks before summarising public sentiment into digestible reports. Generative AI simply makes those insights dramatically easier to understand. “Instead of reading thousands of posts yourself, AI gives you a concise overview of what people are saying,” he explains. The same principle applies to content production. Today’s AI systems can generate social posts, advertising copy and creative assets at remarkable speed. Speed, however, is not synonymous with originality. “One of AI’s biggest strengths is speed,” Umair says. “But that speed also comes with mediocrity.” He argues that AI fundamentally learns from historical patterns rather than genuine invention. It can remix successful ideas, imitate styles and identify what worked previously. But producing genuinely unexpected creative breakthroughs remains difficult. He illustrates the point through famous South Asian advertising slogans such as Tedha Hai Par Mera Hai, campaigns whose success depended precisely on being strange, surprising and culturally resonant. “Those random flashes of creativity are difficult for AI,” he says. “I don’t think AI will ever completely replicate that level of human originality.” In his view, AI is best understood not as a replacement for creative professionals but as a facilitator. “It can probably perform my routine daily work even better than I can,” he says. “But when I need to invent something completely new, when I have to think creatively, that’s where AI still struggles.”
Webcare: Teaching websites to fix themselves
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earch engine optimisation has long been one of digital marketing’s least glamorous disciplines. Unlike advertising campaigns or viral social media posts, SEO is painstaking, repetitive work. Specialists spend countless hours monitoring website performance, identifying broken links, analysing search rankings, checking Core Web Vitals, studying Google Search Console data
and implementing dozens of technical fixes that users never notice but search engines do. Much of that work, Emergent believes, is perfectly suited for machines. Its Webcare Agent begins by analysing a company’s website and integrating directly with popular content management systems such as WordPress and Shopify. Instead of merely identifying technical problems, it can recommend, and with human approval, implement changes directly within the website itself. It continuously monitors Google Search Console signals, detects ranking declines, diagnoses website issues and proposes corrective action before executing any modifications. The second layer is conversational analytics. Instead of searching through menus inside Google Analytics, a marketing manager can simply ask the system why traffic declined last week, which acquisition channels are converting best or where users abandon the customer journey. “The analytics become conversational,” Ejaz says. “You can ask the agent any kind of question about your data.” Unlike the Engage Agent, Webcare attracts far less disagreement from industry observers. For Umair, SEO represents one of AI’s strongest use cases precisely because it revolves around pattern recognition rather than creativity. “All of those tasks are pattern-driven,” he says. “AI mainly helps by telling you: here’s what’s wrong, and here’s how you should fix it. It can even generate the code or instructions needed to make those fixes.” The media executive reaches almost the same conclusion. “That’s perfectly fine,” he says of AI-powered SEO tools. “For reporting, AI is very good.”
Advertising’s invisible machine
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he most commercially significant component of Emergent OS may also be the least visible. Known as the Boost Agent, it sits behind advertising campaigns running on Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Its purpose is deceptively simple: watch campaigns continuously, detect when performance deteriorates, recommend budget changes, pause ineffective advertisements, increase spending on high-performing audiences, create new campaigns and optimise bidding. According to Ejaz, this replaces one of the most routine jobs inside every digital agency. “The person sitting inside an agency or on the client side constantly monitors campaigns,” he says. “They’re increasing budgets, decreasing budgets, pausing ads, checking performance. All of that work is now handled by this agent.” Importantly, Emergent stops short of granting complete autonomy. Every optimisation still requires human approval. The company deliberately keeps “a human in the loop”, even though the platform connects to multiple
language models including Claude, OpenAI and Gemini. “Technology can fail at any time,” Ejaz says. “Otherwise something could go wrong, your client’s budget could be spent very quickly and nobody would realise it.” Understanding whether Boost represents genuine innovation requires understanding how digital advertising actually works. Umair says public discussion of AI in media buying often misunderstands the industry. “There is no person sitting there negotiating prices,” he says. “It’s all based on bidding.” Every second, Google’s and Meta’s advertising platforms conduct automated auctions, evaluating thousands of competing advertisers attempting to reach similar audiences. “The bidding is done by machines. Every advertising platform has its own machine performing real-time bidding.” Artificial intelligence does not replace Google’s auction. Instead, it operates one level above it. “I can tell my AI never to bid more than two dollars,” Umair explains. “The AI studies historical data and decides which audiences deserve more spending and which audiences should receive less.”
So who loses their job?
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f Emergent’s technology performs as advertised, its biggest impact may not be on marketing budgets or advertising performance. It may be on payroll. Ejaz does not present Emergent OS as a replacement for marketing leaders or creative directors. His vision is considerably narrower, but still disruptive. Umair goes further. “If someone’s entire job is producing reports, exporting Excel sheets, building pivot tables and presenting numbers, that person is highly replaceable.” He includes SEO specialists, digital media planners, media buyers and analysts whose work revolves around repetitive optimisation. “SEO is repetitive. Media planning is repetitive. Data analysis is repetitive. Those jobs are primarily about identifying patterns.” The media executive accepts much of that argument. He readily acknowledges that AI is extraordinarily good at reporting, campaign monitoring and identifying optimisation opportunities. “Where four people are currently doing the work, one AI agent can do the work of all four,” he says. “It saves time, saves energy and it’s accurate.” His disagreement begins when optimisation becomes decision-making. Modern advertising, he argues, often requires judgement that cannot easily be reduced to mathematical objectives. “The AI will either chase CPM or chase reach. It won’t be able to pursue both simultaneously because it isn’t human.” “If a human has to monitor it, then we’re back to the same thing,” he says. “You paid money to build the bot, and then you also hired a human to sit there and monitor it. Then what’s the benefit?” n
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Traders at the Pak-Iran border are becoming impatient for business to kick off The potential of Pak-Iran trade has long been acknowledged by both sides. Pakistan already isn’t trading with two of its neighbours: India and Afghanistan. Can the ongoing war in Iran change the status quo? By Usama Liaqat
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akistan-Iran trade has been on the cards, and then off, for quite some years now. One would imagine that Iran being a neighbour that Pakistan appears to have amicable relations with, bilateral trade would have been a no-brainer. Authorities on both sides of the 900-km border seem to have recognised the significant potential of this exchange. But willingness alone is not enough. Sanctions imposed by the West, primarily the United States, have restricted the formal channels of trade between the two neighbours. Banking coverage remains sparse, and on the books, the level of trade is measly. But this is not to say that trade hasn’t been happening between the two countries. In fact, a massive economy of informal trade has developed across the Balochistan border, where desperados on motor bikes, pickups, and boats smuggle everything from oil to crockery to chocolates in containers. The value of smuggled Iranian fuel was estimated at over a billion dollars annually in 2024 — before the current Iran-US war. Sanctions didn’t make things easier, but informal ways-around provided a hope. Things became more urgent in 2024, when Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan
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closed, effectively shutting down the land route towards Central Asia which was the destination (beside Afghanistan) of much of our food exports. Under pressure, the government clambered to find an alternative route, and landed on Iran. It eased some regulatory hurdles and in April, Pakistan started exporting meat through Iran to Uzbekistan, a key meat destination. The US-Israeli war on Iran, however, added another twist. Informal trade appeared to have increased, with Irani riyal in the first month of the war jumping almost 4 times in value. With the MOU and the ceasefire, hopes shot up finally that a formal push might open the Pak-Iran border once and for all. But then the ceasefire fell through and the situation became more complicated. Passage through the border has slowed down, and despite the recent meetings between officials of the two countries pledging increased trade of 10 billion dollars per year, the traders on the ground are finding themselves becoming impatient for the resumption of trade. Iran does present the opportunity for a major trading partner, given that our trade with two of our other neighbours, Afghanistan and India, is more or less dead. But without a firm and just peace in place, and the trade between Pakistan and Iran being formalised, the business activity of peace will likely wither into the quotidian of smuggling. Given the fact
that formalisation would depend on the easing of US-sanctions, the matter might be out of the hands of either Pakistan or Iran to fully enforce on their own. However, the war does present Iran with an opportunity to reshuffle its standing in the economy of the world, and if it is able to gain sustained sanctions relief, it might result in just what Pakistani (and Irani) traders have been looking for.
The Problem
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akistan and Iran have both understandably recognised the potential of bilateral trade for decades now. But the cooperation has fallen through, often because of geopolitical pressures exerted on Pakistan, in the forms of US threat of economic sanctions. A major case in point is the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline. The idea was simple: a 2775 km pipeline from the South Pars gas field to Karachi, delivering cheaper fuel to Pakistan, which has majorly relied on imports to power the country. The deal was signed in 2010, and required both Iran and Pakistan to build their respective sides of the pipeline. Iran finished its side in 2011, while Pakistan stalled, first under dwindling interest of local investors, and then finally under US threats. The project, which could have saved billions, lies alimbo.
Sanctions, then, have not been a small matter. But they have spurred a massive informal economy in response. Speedboats carrying diesel, and pickups and motorcycles carrying canisters of petrol have generated an economy well beyond the formal systems required by the government to generate tax revenues. This informality is, in fact, necessitated by the US sanctions which restrict banking and payments into Iran. What this has meant is that a massive chunk of trade – in billions of dollars annually – goes unregulated and untaxed, costing the coffers billions of rupees. So, this has also harmed Pakistan in a way. Both the countries have also tried to push for a Free Trade Agreement. In fact, one was signed in 2004, but after initially generating volumes, it fell through - again because of sanctions pressure and associated causes, including the lack of formal financial channels between the neighbouring countries. There have been various attempts to revive it, for instance in 2017 and 2021, but the agreement has been a thing belonging more to the rhetorical realm than to the real. In 2025, however, an added pressure exerted Pakistan. Tensions and exchange of fire between Afghanistan and Pakistan eventually led to the closure of the shared border. The problem was not only that Afghanistan itself was a key destination for some of our exports, but also that it provided a land route to the countries in central Asia. The geopolitical depended-ness of business impressed itself in a painful fervour. Potato was one of the crops that was hurt the most. That year there was a bumper crop of 12 million tonnes and the 4 million tonnes of surplus that traditionally went the Afghanistan way suddenly had nowhere to go. Pakistan yet again turned to look at what had always been there.
A Solution?
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ne would think that formalisation of the trade would be the solution, but we have seen how sanctions preclude such efforts happening at any sort of appreciable scale. So, a workaround was found through tweaking banking frameworks and rules to facilitate trade between the two countries. In 2024-25, for instance, the Pakistani Commerce ministry removed the requirement for financial instruments for mango exports to Iran, positioning the move as one that removed procedural burdens for seasonal trade. And in December 2025, the government granted a onetime exemption from the normal export requirements to facilitate the export of potatoes and kinnows to CIS countries through Iran. Earlier, exports had to be routed through documented, bank-compliant payment
channels to ensure that export proceeds are traceable and can be repatriated into. Exporters were also required to use letters of credit or advance payment. But these requirements were temporarily suspended to account for the realities on the ground. Soon, newer customs stations were also established along the border to regulate and facilitate bilateral trade. In March 2026, this facility was made employed again. Pakistan allowed the export of rice to central Asian countries and Azerbaijan through a land route passing through Iran. At the same time, it permitted a wider basket of exports to Iran, including food and agriculture-based items as well as pharmaceuticals and tents. It was specified that this would be a three-month exemption, in a recognition of the need to keep the wheels rolling, notwithstanding the sanctions. Reality often is determined by reality. It seems that here too it is what is happening on the ground, rather than what’s being pontificated from conference rooms and analyst offices, that is pressuring the government to modify its course. Unless a meaningful sanctions relief is afforded to Iran, Pakistan might have to keep resorting to such ad hoc measures to afford a semblance of trade continuity and allay the fears of the local farmers, manufacturers, and businessmen. The potential benefits are there, especially in the case of fuel imports. Pakistan is reliant on energy imports to keep the country running, and access to Irani oil, theoretically cheaper and actually closer, might ease import pressures, while leveraging geography to its advantage. But then again there are costs too. For one, the problem of the informal nature of the trade remains. But more importantly, even the potential benefit of importing Irani oil might not be enough if the potential effects of sanctions are taken into account. After all, Pakistan is dependent on things other than fuel too. These include external financing, remittance channels, trade settlement systems and support from multilateral institutions, and trade at scale with Iran would expose it to a risk it can barely afford to take. Unless sanctions are removed, that is.
Where Things Stand
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he border between Pakistan and Iran appears to have become more constricted recently. According to a recent report by the New York Times, some goods such as mangoes are stuck at the border, while other products like rice and textile (from Pakistan) and oil and steel (from Iran) have been slowly trickling through. The report also mentioned how sanctions prevent any meaningful conversation happening over trade between Iran and Pakistan, and barring
these Pakistan could ramp up its exports of maize, rice, textiles as well as pharma and surgical products to Iran, while Iran could export fuel and gas to Pakistan at rates much cheaper than Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries. This week, Pakistan and Iran concluded a 3-day Joint Trade Committee meeting. Cochaired by Jam Kamal Khan, Pakistan’s Commerce Minister, and Dr Mohammad Atabak, Iran’s Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, it was announced that the countries hoped to reach 10 billion dollars in bilateral trade. Crucially, however, no deadline or estimated timeline was announced. Similarly, although the meeting “set the stage for the early finalisation” of a Free Trade Agreement, we have been here multiple times over the past decade or so. And seen nothing come it. The point is that there appears to be no going around the sanctions. But there’s one crucial dynamic which can change the paradigm. The war in the Persian Gulf, though initiated to subdue Iran as a regional and autonomous power, appears to have empowered Iran. It has finally asserted its leverage on the Strait of Hormuz, and the damage inflicted on American bases in the region as well as the reported interceptor shortage has increased its confidence to confront Americans trying to patrol in the Strait, and control the passage of vessels. The failed MOU, for what it was worth, did aim to grant Iran some kind of financial relief through the release of frozen funds and the promise of future investment. Of course, that MOU failed, but if that is any indication of what leverage Iran appeared to have extracted, it might find some sort of sanctions relief should the stalemate drag on, and the risk to energy markets becomes more pronounced. If these sanctions are removed or toned down, Pakistan might have an opportunity to finally formalise trade with Iran and capitalise on the opportunity such exchange might present. But there is one last complicating factor. The security situation in Balochistan, where armed insurgents appear to continually thorn the sides of the security forces, presents a constant danger, at least for now. Even Barrick Gold, 50 percent shareholder in the Reko Diq project, had to temporarily pause for a security review. Although it later reaffirmed its commitment to the project, it is not good for business if such externalities continue to impinge upon the security such a massive business requires. This is especially because the primary reason trade with Iran is attractive is because it offers a land border, and the trade must go through land. And that would require security. How the situation unfolds, only time would tell. But before we jump the gun, we must still remember that sanctions, at least for now, are probably the bigger issue obstructing bilateral trade with Iran. n
TRADE
A salt mine, two suitors and a Rs42.6bn counter-offer 32
Punjab’s Rs2.58bn Warcha auction has set the province against a federal miner and complicated two processing projects. At stake is whether Pakistan can finally keep more of the value hidden in its rock salt. By Shahzad Paracha
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291-acre piece of the Warcha salt deposit in Khushab has become the centre of a contest between Punjab and the federal government, with two private investors potentially caught in between the conflict. The dispute began when the Punjab Government cancelled the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation’s (PMDC) lease and auctioned the area to Sapphire Chemicals for Rs 2.58 billion over 10 years. Sapphire Chemicals is a subsidiary of Sapphire Textile Mills — the core of the Sapphire Group. The PMDC, which is a semi-autonomous corporation attached to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources, has gone to court, arguing that its renewal remained valid. The cancellation has caused the PMDC another concern: they had been in talks with a United States based venture for a $200 million investment in a rock salt processing and value addition facility. In the midst of the conflict, the PMDC has tried to create a way out by offering Punjab a new 10-year joint venture, which it claims is projected to generate Rs42.6 billion from value-added salt products. Speaking to Profit, a representative from the Punjab Government seemed to indicate the province was sticking to its guns. They said PMDC lost the lease for non-compliance and that auctioning deposits to downstream processors is itself the route to higher value. The conflict, however, reflects Pakistan’s wider minerals problem. We have more than enough natural resources, but divided authority and investment announcements mean creating operating plants is a struggle.
Himalayan pink salt comes exclusively from the Salt Range in the Punjab region of Pakistan, with Khewra being the largest source. Pakistani exporters have reported that traders in India and the UAE repacked the product and sold it abroad with Indian-origin or generic Himalayan branding. Karak-Bahadurkhel belt. Mineral titles are provincial, however. Punjab’s Mines and Minerals Department grants and regulates leases under provincial law, while PMDC sits under the federal Petroleum Division and must gain those provincial rights.
Pakistan extracted about 3.2 million tonnes of rock salt in FY2024, while Observatory of Economic Complexity data put broad salt exports at $91.8 million in 2024. That category includes more than pink salt, illustrating weak product-level data. Raw chunks earn far
Rock salt in Pakistan
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akistan’s rock salt comes principally from the Salt Range across northern Punjab and the adjoining Kohat region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Khewra in Jhelum is the best-known mine and the main source of the rose-coloured product marketed as Himalayan pink salt, although it lies in the Salt Range south of the Himalayas. Trace minerals, particularly iron oxides, colour some veins; chemically, the product remains overwhelmingly sodium chloride. PMDC also operates or has operated projects at Warcha, Kalabagh, Makrach and in the
A gate at the Warcha Salt Mine with the PMDC’s logo painted on top in the same colour as the gate. The PMDC claims their rights to the mine extended up to 2032, but were dismissed by the Punjab Government. Punjab claims the lease was withdrawn over non-compliance.
MINING
less than food-grade packs, grinders, spa products, tiles, lamps and chemical derivatives. Pakistani exporters have reported that traders in India and the UAE repacked the product and sold it abroad with Indian-origin or generic Himalayan branding. Pakistan began pursuing geographical-indication protection after its GI law took effect in 2020, but international protection remains unfinished. Warcha is also not simply another Khewra: TDAP identifies it mainly with white crystalline salt, while PMDC says it yields white and pink salt, with production potential around 200,000 tonnes a year. It can feed consumer products as well as soda ash and other chemicals used in glass, detergents and manufacturing.
The dispute
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MDC says it sought renewal before its Warcha lease expired and accepted a provincial offer after the matter was discussed at the Special Investment Facilitation Council. Previous reporting places that discussion in January 2024 and says Warcha, Khewra and Kalabagh were included. The corporation maintains that its Warcha right ran to March 2032, but Punjab cancelled the renewal on March 2, 2026 after departmental remedies were exhausted. PMDC then approached the Lahore High Court and said the court restrained coercive action while the case remained pending. Punjab nevertheless auctioned the area in June, leaving the cancellation and transfer at the centre of PMDC’s challenge. Punjab rejects the claim that PMDC was deprived of a compliant lease. In a written response to Profit, the secretary of the Mines and Minerals Department said the leases were withdrawn for non-compliance on the recommendation of a ministerial committee established to regulate rock-salt leases. The secretary said Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had ordered transparent auctions to progressive companies capable of downstream processing, both to raise revenue and increase the resource’s economic value. That position fits Punjab’s July launch of a pink-salt financing scheme, loans of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 5 crores for processing machinery and a proposed 110-acre processing zone near Quaidabad. The province’s case is that an industrial bidder can connect mining to manufacturing. The public account does not, however, identify PMDC’s precise default or explain how the auction sat with the interim court protection claimed by the corporation. Sapphire is not a bidder without an industrial plan. Part of the diversified Sapphire group, it is developing a 200,000-tonne-a-year soda ash plant in Khushab, backed by a $100 million financing facility announced by HBL in late 2025. An October 2024 memorandum had
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A painted plaque at the Warcha Salt Mines detailing the history of the mines. At the end it points out that the mines have been under the control of the PMDC since 1974. envisaged PMDC supplying it about 360,000 tonnes of industrial-grade salt annually. The auction has created an unusual reversal: PMDC’s intended customer now controls the disputed deposit. This supports Punjab’s downstream-processing argument, but leaves the earlier arrangement uncertain. The Rs2.58 billion lease is reported as payable over 10 years, although the stated Rs19.1 million monthly instalment does not reconcile with that total and requires clarification. The other investor is Wisconsin-based Miracle Saltworks Collective Inc, which signed a non-binding memorandum with PMDC in August 2023. In February 2024, the parties announced an SIFC-facilitated joint venture for a crushing and packaging plant in a Mianwali special economic zone. The Petroleum Division said it would bring $200 million and produce 150,000 tonnes annually from June 2026. That date has passed, while the investment is still described as proposed and at risk. Public announcements provide little detail on committed equity, financing or construction.
The proposal
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he Prime Minister’s Office has asked the Petroleum Division for a report on the cancellation and its effect on the US venture. The division presents PMDC’s proposed partnership as an economic alternative and an exit from litigation. Under the 10-year model, PMDC says 591,190 tonnes of salt would generate Rs42.6 billion, or Rs355 million a month. This equals roughly Rs72,000 of revenue per tonne. PMDC argues
that Punjab would gain more than under the auction while industrial supplies and the foreign project would be preserved. Punjab would contribute mineral rights, PMDC would bring mining capability and both would share the downstream value. The headline comparison nevertheless needs context. Sapphire’s Rs2.58 billion is consideration for a lease, whereas PMDC’s Rs42.6 billion is projected gross revenue; it is neither stated profit nor a guaranteed return to Punjab. A proper comparison requires ownership, costs, prices, taxes, royalties, risk allocation and Punjab’s share of cash flows. It also requires clarity on whether 591,190 tonnes is a 10-year total, an annual target or a particular product mix. The same test belongs on Sapphire’s plan and the $200 million Miracle announcement. The strongest offer is the one that survives legal review, commits real capital and leaves the greatest verifiable value in Pakistan. Warcha has enough salt to accommodate ambition, but ambition is not what the sector lacks. Pakistan has announced branding drives, processing zones, export restrictions and billion-rupee plants before; its shortage is execution and certainty once agreements are signed. The federal and Punjab governments should settle the title cleanly and require every contender to disclose what it will invest, process, sell and return to the public. If the outcome is only a higher lease cheque, Pakistan will still be selling a mineral. If it produces operating factories, protected origin, dependable industrial supply and branded exports, Warcha may finally become part of a value chain. n
MINING
The PCB won’t show you their receipts. Here’s why. The board has not made its financial statements for the past three years public, and now they’re claiming they shouldn’t have to
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By Abdullah Niazi
or the past three years, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has not released its annual financial statements. The only sliver of information to trickle through since 2023 has come from Chief Financial Officer Javed Murtaza, who said the board had earned “its highest ever pre-tax surplus of Rs 10.28 billion” in 2024. That solitary detail was disclosed in a single sentence at the end of the CFO’s comments in the PCB’s annual report from last year. Since then, the PCB has upgraded its major international stadiums in Lahore and Karachi, hosted the lucrative ICC Champion’s Trophy, sold the rights to two more HBL PSL franchises and renegotiated the franchise fee with the six existing franchise owners. The lack of financial disclosures in this time has left all of these significant milestones shrouded in opacity. But none of this is new for the PCB. Other than a brief interregnum from 2018-24, the board has largely kept its financial affairs shielded from the public. Now, a case being argued in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has brought a key matter to the fore: is the PCB a public body that needs to make public disclosures, or is it exempt on the basis that they are a self-sustaining entity that does not receive funding from the federal government?
A spotty history
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istorically, the board has had a spotty record with financial transparency. The precedent to make the board’s financial statements public was first set in 2018-19, when former Chairman Ehsan Mani claimed the board was publishing its annual audited financial statements on its website “for the first time
SPORTS
after over a decade.” Explaining his decision, Mr Mani had said “it is essential that the Pakistan Cricket Board is transparent and accountable to its stakeholders in all its dealings.” Transparency (or the lack thereof) at the PCB, however, seems to be a matter of opinion rather than one of principle. One only has to look at the stance the board took a few days ago in front of the Islamabad High Court (IHC): that they were simply not obliged by any law to make their accounts public. This is how it went down. On the 9th of July the Pakistan Infor-
Ehsan Mani, who served as President of the International Cricket Council from 2003-06 was appointed chairman of the PCB in 2018. His tenure marked the beginning of the board publishing its financial statements on its website. A move he claimed was central to transparency.
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mation Commission (PIC) ordered the PCB to disclose its annual budgets for the financial years 2023 to 2025, along with a detailed breakdown of expenditure; policies governing the confidentiality and disclosure of such information; details of players and officials who travelled for this year’s T20 World Cup; and of the board’s audit mechanisms and reports. The PIC’s decision was made on the basis of a Right To Information (RTI) request. The PCB responded by taking the PIC’s order to the Islamabad High Court, which has agreed to hear the case. Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar has suspended the PIC’s order for the time being. Justice Dogar has issued notices for the 22nd of September. That means the PCB does not have to disclose any of the details ordered by the PIC at least until the next hearing in the IHC. The court will proceed as it sees fit, but what matters for now is the plea the PCB has taken: they claim there is no legal requirement compelling them to disclose any of their financial details. Public entities, corporations, and departments are all subject to rules of disclosure that compel them to make their documents, dealings, and finances a matter of the public record in Pakistan. But according to a report in Dawn covering the IHC case, the board said that unlike government departments, it receives no funding from the federal government. And as such, it should be exempt from the same rules.
The unique nature of the PCB
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he Pakistan Cricket Board is a unique beast. It is an autonomous government entity with its own constitution and sources of revenue.
It receives revenue from the International Cricket Council, sponsorship deals, gate receipts, broadcasting rights for cricket hosted in Pakistan, and from the franchise fees they get for hosting the HBL PSL. With this money the board pays its players, officials, and manages its own expenses. It does not get handouts from the government and it is definitely not run on public tax money. In so far as that, the board looks, smells, and behaves like a private corporation. But then there is the flipside. The PCB is not a private company serving shareholders. It was established through government action, the prime minister is its patron, its chairmen are effectively chosen by the government and its current chairman is a federal minister. It runs Pakistan’s most popular sport and receives public support through land for its stadiums. It might not run on tax money, acts in the public interest and is, for all intents and purposes, a very public entity. According to Advocate Taffazul Rizvi, who has previously represented the PCB, the entire question of financial disclosures comes down to whether the board can be defined as a public entity. He argues that there is more evidence that the board is a public entity than not. “There was litigation between different Chairmen in 2014,” he says, referring to the game of musical chairs between Najam Sethi and Zaka Ashraf that held the board captive for some years. “In that judgement, a new constitution was drafted by two retired SC judges. It was created through an SRO under the Sports Development and Control Ordinance 1962. This is how the PCB stands established,” says Mr Rizvi.
As far as its origins are concerned, the PCB was created by an act of government. “Under the 2014 constitution, the Prime Minister of Pakistan is also the patron-in-chief of the board, and while the chairman is an elected official on paper, it has always been whoever the prime minister appoints to the board. The current chairman also happens to be a sitting minister, so taking a stance that the PCB is not part of the government will not stand,” says Mr Rizvi. He also points towards a recent judgement of the Lahore High Court (LHC). The facts of the case itself are dull. The PCB dismissed the head of a regional association and he went to the LHC to challenge his dismissal. The court declared the board’s decision was illegal and restored Shakil Ahmad to his position as President of the Islamabad Cricket Association. What makes the decision interesting is the basis on which the LHC ruled. In its judgement, the court cited a decision of the Indian Supreme Court, in which they held that the “High Court possesses powers to issue writs” even in cases where “a private body performs public functions.” That means that the PCB’s unique nature of being a self-sustaining entity does not protect it from writ petitions — which are usually reserved for public officials or organizations. “This court decision held that writ petitions are maintainable against the PCB,” says Mr Rizvi, who was the lead counselor in this case. “This is the same way the Indian Supreme Court held that writ petitions are maintainable against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).” These, of course, are not the only indicators that the PCB is a public entity. As Mr Rizvi explains, the board has regularly been audited by the Auditor General of Pakistan (that is usually one of the antics a new Chairman pulls when they take charge — get the AGP to audit the board in case there is something from the previous chairman to uncover) and also appear before standing committees of parliament. “As far as the money angle is concerned, the PCB gets indirect support from the government in the form of land it builds its stadium at. They get this land worth billions for negligible amounts,” adds Mr Rizvi.
So what about those financial statements?
From 2011 onwards, Zaka Ashraf and Najam Sethi have served a combined seven terms as Chairman of the PCB. The back and forth eventually resulted in two former Supreme Court judges drafting the board’s 2014 constitution, which is the one being used today.
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he matter now rests with the Islamabad High Court, and we will know more after proceedings on the 22nd of September. The PCB has claimed that the Pakistan Information Commission (PIC) ordered it to make its documents public beyond its jurisdiction. The earlier decision
of the LHC would indicate that this defence is weak, but the IHC is not beholden by precedent set by the LHC. At most, the LHC’s decision and the Indian Supreme Court decision it was based on can be used as persuasive precedent but are not binding. The Islamabad High Court decision might now play a part in answering a question that has been unclear for many decades: what exactly is the PCB? As far as the financial statements are concerned, they are definitely out there somewhere. As a full member nation of the International Cricket Council (ICC) since 1952, the PCB has long been required to submit its annual statements to the ICC within six months of the financial year ending. That means the PCB is regularly being audited, its consolidated financials are being compiled and sent to Dubai for review, but they are not being published on the board’s website. This is not particularly strange even if we look at the broader cricketing world. Financial transparency among the world’s leading cricket boards remains uneven. Of the ICC’s 12 Full Members, eight regularly publish recent audited financial statements or audited summaries: Australia, England and Wales, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies. Australia is the most consistent, publishing reports from as far back as 2006-07. India, meanwhile, has only consistently started making their financials public since 2021. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Zimbabwe do not currently meet the same standard.
Why the board should make the finances public anyway
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hen the PCB first published its financial statements in 2018, it was clear the decision was a matter of principle not policy. Ehsan Mani’s decision to do so was lauded, especially considering the board had posted a loss that year, and faced a net deficit of Rs 13.3 billion. But no clear mechanism was created to make sure that publishing the statements was a requirement. The board’s 2014 constitution requires it to present the audited financial statements before the board of governors and to the patron-in-chief, but is not clear on making them accessible to the public. Without any codification, that same spirit of transparency seems to be withering. does not seem to have made its way to the current administration. The case in the Islamabad High Court will be interesting to watch. The court will have to decide whether or not the PCB is enough of a public entity to have
to make its financial details public. Of course, there are nuances. While making financial statements public should (ideally) be a no-brainer, the scope of the PIC’s order also included contractual and operational information relating to national cricketers, selection committee members and other PCB officials. Even under the Right To Information Act 2017, there are certain exceptions such as personal details that do not necessarily have to be disclosed even by a public entity. The PCB might find itself in a position where the court allows it to keep its operational and contractual information private (the board argues it operates in a highly competitive global environment), but to still disclose its financial information. At the end of the day, the matter comes down to what the Pakistan Cricket Board thinks of the Pakistani people. If its treatment of its players is any indicator (remember their fine on Naseem Shah for a tweet he says he didn’t even make himself?) its attitude towards the public is not promising. What we should remember is that beyond the frustration any Pakistan fan feels at the team’s performance on the field, it does not have much to do with the board. Sure, the PCB appoints the Captain, selects the selector and provides facilities, rehab etc to its players, but match day results eventually fall on the group of eleven that takes the field — the glory is theirs and so is the failure. The sign of a healthy board administration is less victory on the field and more its ability to run operations smoothly while making and spending money on cricket in the country. Making financial statements public was a sign of trust from the board, and the numbers largely reflect a board doing pretty well. The PCB recorded its highest-ever revenue of Rs12.45bn in 2022-23 and a profit of nearly Rs4bn, its second-largest annual
profit. ICC and ACC payments contributed Rs5.43bn, helped by a record $17mn ICC distribution and the $3.57mn Asia Cup hosting fee. Home tours generated Rs3.69bn as broadcast income jumped from Rs629mn to Rs2.52bn, overtaking the HBL PSL’s Rs3.55bn contribution for the first time since 2018. The PSL nevertheless remained highly profitable, earning the PCB Rs1.56bn after costs of more than Rs2bn, while home tours produced only around Rs660mn after Rs3.03bn of expenditure. The results marked a sharp recovery from the Rs756mn covid-induced loss recorded in 2021, while cash reserves exceeded Rs20bn by end-2023. Public financial statements are essential to reveal these distinctions between revenue and profit, identify the board’s changing income sources and expose risks such as franchise debts, which rose from Rs65mn to Rs849mn. Beyond the nagging politics of Pakistan Cricket, the numbers tell somewhat of a success story. If the board had a surplus of over Rs 10 billion at the end of 2023-24, then it should be something they want to advertise. According to one former senior board official, the PCB is currently flush with cash after increased money from the ICC, its hosting of the Champions Trophy and sale of HBL PSL franchises. There are no trade secrets in these documents. Other boards make them public as well. The only thing financial disclosures do is promote transparency and tell you who the board works for. After all, if the ICC can be trusted with basic financial information such as revenue, costs, profits and losses — why can’t the Pakistani people? Profit reached out multiple times to the PCB to ask why they were not disclosing their financial statements. Was this simply a delay? Was it a shift in policy from the Ehsan Mani era? Ironically enough, the board remained mum. n
SPORTS
‘70-Year Framework Is Obsolete,’ Says Senior Executive Currently Holding Four Full-Time Leadership Roles
By Profit In a keynote address delivered to bewildered shareholders at the Annual Leadership Summit, the company’s Chief Operating Officer announced that the corporate infrastructure has completely collapsed, urging management to immediately subdivide the firm into smaller, autonomous business units. The COO—who currently serves as Acting Chief Executive, Head of Supply Chain, Chairman of the Employee Welfare Board, and Interim Manager of the Company Cricket Team—told attendees that “the 70-year-old organizational chart can no longer deliver basic quarterly metrics.” “Look at our daily operations,” the COO stated, gesturing to a slide deck titled Why Nothing Works. “Even with the Group CEO working 18-hour shifts just manually approving travel vouchers and firefighting vendor disputes, we are spinning our wheels. The current framework is
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obsolete. We don’t need minor operational fixes; we need to carve the main enterprise into six regional sub-holding companies immediately.” Industry analysts were quick to note the subtle complexity of the COO’s diagnosis, given that he personally oversaw the drafting of the current quarterly budget, signed off on the organizational restructuring last autumn, and maintains direct operational oversight over 85% of department heads. “It is a bold and visionary statement,” noted one senior analyst from the back row. “It takes immense institutional courage for the person holding all the keys to the building to stand at the podium and inform everyone that the locks have been broken for decades.” When asked by a minority shareholder whether creating six brand-new subsidiary boards, complete with extra Vice President salaries, regional headquarters, and separate HR divisions, might simply compound administrative overhead, the COO dismissed
the concern. “That is legacy thinking,” the COO responded. “Look at our competitors in international markets—they have dozens of regional branches. Sure, our core product line is bleeding cash, our supply chain has no electricity, and the junior staff hasn’t seen a merit-based promotion since 2018, but adding four new regional Managing Directors will bring governance closer to the factory floor.” The proposal received mixed reactions from the board of directors. A senior board member from the legacy legacy wing quietly posted on LinkedIn shortly after the keynote, noting that if the COO wished to reform the corporate structure, he might consider presenting a formal motion during scheduled executive committee meetings—a forum the COO has reportedly attended twice this year. At press time, the COO had excused himself early from the summit to attend an emergency meeting regarding the national team’s top-order batting lineup.
SATIRE