Najam in The News: The CPEC in Pakistan
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said that Pakistan was capable of absorbing the increase in economic activity resulting from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement.
Najam made the argument in a Jan. 24 article in The News entitled “A Question of Capacity.”
From the text of the article:
Adil Najam, Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University thinks otherwise. He feels there is no reason why Pakistan should not be able to absorb the CPEC investments. “We keep using the $46 billion number as if it’s going to be delivered to us in cash in one go. Much of this will not come directly into the economy as cash. Some will be accounting artifacts with the budget. Parts of this — maybe large parts — will go to Chinese companies for work in Pakistan. And so on.”
But even if this is pumped into the economy as cash, it would happen over a number of years. “Let’s assume it will be around $10 billion a year. But let us remember that the size of the Pakistan economy is around $280-300 billion per year. So, at least theoretically, there is no reason why an economy should not be able to absorb a three to four per cent additional injection.”
Having said that, Najam adds, “of course, large amount of new money can trigger large-scale corruption… But that is not a factor of the state of the economy, that is a reflection of the state of governance in society.”
You can read the entire article here.
Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science. In 2008 he was invited by the United Nations Secretary General to serve on the UN Committee on Development (CDP). He was a member of the President of Pakistan’s Special Task Force on Human Development (2001) and served on Pakistan’s Presidential Commission on Higher Education (2002). Learn more about him here.