Pakistan's development: An overview

This is the text of two lectures given in the summer of 1980, one at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, and the other at the National Defense College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The lectures attempted to identify some non-economic determinants of Pakistan's economic performance since the standard economic explanations are not very satisfactory for analysing the country's rather erratic performance over the last three decades. The lectures reviewed Pakistan's economic history from 1947, the time of independence, to 1977, when political power moved once again from a civilian government to a military regime. The lectures underscored the importance of the nature of external economic development, the extent of government commitment to development and the level of participation in economic management as important determinants of economic performance. One of the important conclusions reached was that the governments in the Third World must pay heed to these factors in planning for the difficult times that lie ahead.     

Production versus reproduction: A threat to China's development strategy

The goals of the post-Mao leadership to turn China into a powerful and modern socialist society are jeopardized by the sum total of China's population and projected population growth rates. National development plans are thus based on policies to rapidly promote production and drastically reduce population growth, which at the local level make quite contradictory demands on peasant households. The question underlying China's future development is: can current production plans based on the responsibility system and expanding domestic sidelines which demand that peasant households have access to considerable labour resources be reconciled with State reproduction plants which demand that peasant households have only one child?     

Alliance for production: Mexico's incentives for private sector industrial development

The paper examines the tax-credit programme incorporated in the Industrial Plan introduced by the Lopez-Portillo administration (1976–1982). It discusses the objectives of industrial planning in Mexico at that time, and in particular the attempt to use fiscal incentives to guide private sector investment into priority areas. It argues that a priori the effectiveness of the tax-credit programme set out in the plan is questionable as a means of achieving this objective. Data on recent industrial developments in Mexico are examined to see the degree to which they cast light on the question.     

Guyana's second development plan 1972–1976: A macro-economic assessment

Guyana's Second Development Plan 1972–1976 seems to be the product of a great learning process. The Plan envisages an ambitious expenditure programme of G$1,150 million and an annual increase in GNP of 8.5% (a target we feel would be difficult to achieve). The theoretical and structural framework of the Plan is commendable. Conventional approaches were eschewed and the emphasis was placed on people and the society. However, some weaknesses do remain, but despite these weaknesses, the Plan does seem to have some of the ingredients to make it more successful than previous development plans in Guyana.     

The republic of Korea's experience with export-led industrial development

This paper is a summary of findings from the author's research conducted intermittently over the past seven years and reported elsewhere in greater detail for more specialized audiences. It begins with a brief history of the Republic of Korea's industrial incentive policies, followed by an examination of historical trends in the real effective exchange rates for exports and imports. Estimates of nominal and effective incentive rates for 1968 are summarized, and the changes that have taken place in the structure of the Republic of Korea's trade and production are quantified and related to its industrial incentive policies. The conclusion of the paper is that the Republic of Korea's outward-looking development strategy and the policy measures adopted to implement it have resulted in a generally efficient and equitable process of rapid industrialization.     

Some aspects of China's agricultural development experience: Implications for developing countries in Asia

China's rather ‘unorthodox’ rural development strategies have attracted growing interest from developing countries in search of more effective development alternatives. The Chinese experiment is characterized by: (1) heavy emphasis on the institutional precondition for agricultural development; (2) rejection of urban-biased policies for more balanced strategies comprising many distinctly pro-agrarian measures; and (3) an integrated approach, centred primarily on the communes, which closely links production to distribution, rural capital formation, rural industrialization, and a wide range of non-farm activities. The Chinese experience should be instructive to many developing countries, even though its direct transfer-ability to different political and social contexts is often called into question.