Pakistan, Aug. 14 -- Pakistan is not short of economic plans. We have had five-year plans, annual plans, vision documents, export strategies, industrial policies, energy policies, investment policies, privatisation programmes and reform agendas. Governments change. Ministers change. Acronyms change. Conferences are held. Targets are announced.

Yet remarkably similar problems survive every plan.

Projects take years longer than intended. Investors move from one department to another. Federal and provincial priorities collide. Decisions taken at the top become files somewhere below.

Pakistan may therefore be diagnosing the wrong disease. Our biggest economic problem may not be the absence of good policy. It may be the absence of a chain o...