Informal sector.

Byline: Lalarukh Ejaz

THE size of Pakistan's informal economy is estimated to be as much as 56 per cent of the country's GDP (as of 2019). This means that it's worth around $180 billion a year, and that is a massive amount by any yardstick.

The country's large black economy is inextricably linked to the levels and quality of governance exercised by the state. In the course of fieldwork for my doctoral research for the University of Southampton, I found that many Pakistani women who were setting out starting their own businesses did so in the informal sector. The reasons they gave usually related to their experience of dealing with the bureaucracy and government machinery in Pakistan which they found to be dominated by red tape and tedious and complicated procedures.

This is precisely what drives many people who want to engage in economic activity towards the undocumented economy. The headache of having to deal with a large bureaucracy, of complying with complicated and long registration procedures, of getting approvals and licences from various government agencies and departments make it difficult for most people to operate within a documented framework.

A large black economy is an indication of misgovernance and indicates a failure of the government to ensure that all businesses and entrepreneurial ventures are included in the formal sector. This failure in turn leads to reduced tax revenue collection since all entities outside of the formal economy do not pay any tax to the government.

Pakistan's black economy is linked to governance.

Given that the size of the black and informal economy is estimated at over half of the country's GDP, bringing it under the documented net would bring hundreds of billions in tax revenue. Those funds would then be spent on social sector development projects and help the FBR meet its annual revenue collection targets.

The solution is to increase the size of the formal economy and this can be done by making transparent and efficient those institutions tasked with registering and regulating businesses. Instead of harassing businesses and entrepreneurs, agencies like the FBR should act as facilitators and make it easier for new ventures to be registered and come under the documentation net. This would in turn be good for the FBR because achieving the tax collection target would be easier than if they were in the black economy.

Government requirements for new businesses are linked to the general level of...

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