The Pakistan Perspective Plan and the Objective of Elimination of Dependence on Foreign Assistance (Notes and Comments)

1. The Pakistan Perspective Plan for the period 1965-85 states “elimination of dependence on foreign assistance” as one of its “explicit aims” [3, p.17]. In this paper we attempt an estimation of the progress towards this objective the country can reasonably be expected to make by 1985 if the Perspective Plan were fully realized. 2. Table 1 [3, p. 19] gives estimates of annual imports and exports at five-year intervals from 1965 to 1985. Table 6 [3, p. 24] provides a breakdown of imports into three categories, viz., “consumer goods”, “capital goods” and “intermediate products”. If the author understands correctly, none of these categories covers debt services1. Imports under these three categories add up to total imports as given in Table 1 [3, p. 19] so that the latter also do not include debt services. We, therefore, interpret the difference between imports and exports, termed “external resources” in [3, p. 19], as measuring estimated net inflow of foreign capital. Adding debt servicing to it we would obtain what has been termed “total foreign assistance” in the Plan [3, Table 4, p. 91], or what is more conventionally referred to as gross inflow of foreign capital.