Two Years of Pakistan’s Second Plan (Review Article)

The publication by the Planning Commission of a Mid-Plan Review1 of progress in the first two years of the Second Five Year Plan (1960-65) gives interested observers a unique opportunity to reassess their thinking about economic development in Pakistan. Despite enormous difficulties because of data limitations, this document represents an admirable effort to measure the growth in the whole economy and in its major sectors in the recent past and to suggest what this implies with respect to the prospects for meeting the targets of the Second Plan. Inevitably, it also raises, though only by implication, some questions about longer-run growth pros¬pects in Pakistan. The document is divided into three parts : a general review, a sectoral review, and a statistical appendix. The appendix, which consumes more than half of the 119 pages, contains the basic raw material which is summarized and evaluated in the first two parts. Since data relating to privately financed development expenditure are generally lacking, most of the reported data refer to the government-financed sector. Nevertheless, attempts have been made to fill in the gaps with estimates for the private sector in order to give a rounded picture of development progress.