A Preliminary Input-Output Table for Large-Scale Industries in Pakistan

As an approach to economic problems, the input-output analysis is in the tradition of general equilibrium economics. However, it is a general equilibrium analysis with numerical strength. It is a general equilibrium theory because it analyzes all the industrial sectors of the economy simul¬taneously with special emphasis on the production relations among the industries. It is an approach with numerical strength because the basic formulation of the theory is amenable to statistical implementation in the econometric sense. Being such, this approach can be, and has been, applied to provide numerical answers to problems related to total economic mobilization of an economy, e.g., for war, for peace or for economic development. For this reason, it has a direct policy orientation; and, can be usefully applied to planning for economic development. On account of the fact that it is a general equilibrium theory with numerical strength, the input-output analysis is not an inexpensive approach. This is due to the fact that stupendous effort is involved in the collection and the processing of statistical data, for all the major production sectors, as well as in tabulation and computation. This is difficult even when the data are available, and when the data are not available, an effort in this direction is thwarted at the very initial stage. The standard reason given for not applying an input-output approach in planning for economic development is that data are not available. In this respect, Pakistan is a typical case. It is the purpose of this paper to present a preliminary input-output table for large-scale industries in Pakistan. As the base year for table, we have selected calendar year 1955, primarily because for this year the census of manufacturing industries is most detailed and most suitable for our purpose. As far as we know, this table is the first of its kind. However, in view of the data problem, the input-output table that will be presented is only a preliminary one. Not only does it exclude all production sectors