Situationer: The 70 billion dollar question: will they come?

EVEN after the country’s rulers dangled the carrot of foreign investments amounting up to $70 billion in front of them, experts, bankers and analysts in Pakistan are finding it hard to digest the prospect of such massive inflows, given the tattered state of our fundamentals. After the formation of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), the general impression is that the armed forces are in charge — ostensibly to give strong signals of stability to foreign investors. Investors are a fickle lot and generally like to invest in a company or a country only once they are sure their financing will get maximum security. “Pakistan has experienced foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows — both in democracy and otherwise. However, investors always look for stability, strong institutional capacity and global economic environment,” says Faisal Mamsa, CEO of Tresmark, a terminal that tracks live prices of financial markets.