WHEN the Senate committee met on Tuesday to ask trade officials why exports were not growing, they received a non-answer: the fault lay elsewhere. The TDAP chief executive set the tone, arguing that his organisation is blamed whenever exports stagnate. He indicated that the real culprits were electricity tariffs, financing costs and production expenses. No doubt, there is truth in this. But if the head of the TDAP, which exists to promote trade, is effectively telling legislators that promotion counts for little against the cost of doing business, the obvious question is what the organisation is for. The trade minister did not help either when he told the panel that he had advised the prime minister to pursue “reciprocal incentives”, a phrase vague enough to mean almost anything and yet nothing. Pakistan’s export base has been narrow and stagnant under successive commerce ministers who have all, at some point, said something similar.

Numbers were offered by trade officials as evidence of their efforts to increase shipments: 91 exhibitions, 11 delegations and preferential arrangements with 93 countries. However, none of this means very much. A country can attend every trade fair on the calendar and still lose market share if what it is selling has not diversified in structure or value addition. The committee would have done more for exporters by asking what came out of those 91 exhibitions in actual contracts and market entries than by letting the figure stand in for performance. In fact, there is little indication that the committee pushed back robustly against the claims and explanations. A parliamentary panel exists to interrogate the executive, not to serve as a stage for it to read its own press release into the record. Welcoming the TDAP’s efforts while talking about the need for a strategy to boost the country’s exports reflects a sorry reality: everyone agrees on the diagnosis, but nobody in government is willing to take responsibility and make an effort to cure the problem.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2026