Imran Khan acknowledged on Friday that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf made mistakes while in power as it was their first experience of governance and the party had ‘no idea’ regarding the challenge that they were facing.

He said this during an exclusive conversation with Rana Mubashir of Aaj New and Ali Khizer of Business Recorder in Islamabad, with the interview broadcast on Saturday.

He said that there was a need to overhaul how the bureaucracy operates in Pakistan. “We need specialists. So we need specialisiation in bureaucracy and we have to sit with the judiciary to implement contract enforecement due to which investment does not enter Pakistan.”

He cited the example of the Joe Biden administration in the US, who he said was just given presentations and briefings by different departments in the first two and a half months after assuming power. “His team was already in place and he knew where the loopholes were.”

He said his government was ill prepared because he didn’t have any prior experience. “We learned in the 3.5 years. By the third and fourth year we were expanding.” He claimed that they had huge plans in place at the time the government was ousted. “If I come into government again, I will turn it around.”

He said there was lack of trust in Pakistan and its state institutions that was a deterred for overseas investors, including overseas Pakistanis, from investing in the country.

“Until and unless people have confidence on contract enforcement, investment does not come. Investment comes with good governance. If corruption in widespread, investment will fall.”

He cited the example of the so-called sugar barons of Pakistan, who he said had penetrated the Competition Commission of Pakistan. “They were fined Rs30 billion and had a stay order pending for eleven years. We tried to change this and prepared a report that proved cartelisation but it also got stuck with judiciary.”

Imran emphasised the importance of the maintaining the precarious balance between in civil-military affairs. “Governance cannot function without balance between government and Establishment. The Establishment is a reality in Pakistan and responsibility and authority have to go hand in hand in every system. The responsibility was with me but authority was somewhere else. You are blaming me for not doing accountability but we had no power to hold anyone accountable.”

He said that his team learned a lot from their time in power. “We learned and unshackled the industry to enhance growth to 5% in our third and fourth year. If the conspiracy was not hatched against us, we were exploring other avenues as well such as minerals.”

He said that despite being mineral rich, the rulers of Pakistan had ignored the industry.

“No one ever focused on minerals and it became a provincial subject. Minerals should never be made provincial subjects,” he said, adding that while the provinces should reap the benefits they lack the capacity to manage this resource.

Eighteenth Amendment

Upon this, Ali Khizer quizzed the former premier on whether a solution to it could be found by revisiting the 18th Amendment as well as the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

However, instead of addressing the question, Imran meandered towards the many projects that he said his government initiated that were stalled for one reason or another.

“Take the example of Ravi city. When we were making it, a lot of consortiums emerged similar to Bundal Island and $3 billion foreign investment was ready for Pakistan but then a court issue a stay order of 11 months and work was stalled.”

He returned to talks of a major overhaul in governance while saying that the focus should be exports. “In five years of PML-N from 2013- 2018, the exports remained stagnant.

Real estate incentives

The conversation then moved towards investment by local industrialists, including the focus of the PTI government on the real estate sector. Khizer pointed out that it resulted in speculation which drove up housing prices.

Imran said that his government adopted a “no questions asked” policy for real estate during Covid because the economy was declining and they were left with slim finances.

“We couldn’t have given unemployment benefits like America gives to its citizens. We uplifted construction industry at such a time to generate employement and support allied industries.”

Imran said that if he had gotten the time, he would have taken the real estate sector to ‘even greater heights’. Unless the industrial sector expands, wealth creation cannot take place and we wont be able to repay loans.

He said the country desperately needs a course correction. “Our IT departments had no specialist. India has $130 billion IT export. When we came, our exports were $1 billion.”

He said that his efforts to set up an IT oriented university in the PM House was sabotaged. “We were in liaison with state of art foreign universities and planned to offer modern IT courses.”