One of the unexpected stories of this year’s Fifa World Cup has been the remarkable number of own goals. Paraguay’s Damian Bobadilla, Australia’s Cameron Burgess and several others were not trying to score for the opposition. They were attempting to avert danger. Yet under pressure, hurried decisions or poor positioning turned defensive interventions into costly mistakes.
The tournament offers a timely lesson for economic policymaking. Nations, like football teams, do not lose simply because their opponents are stronger. They often lose because they make avoidable mistakes themselves.
Pakistan’s economic debate, however, tends to focus on external forces – geopolitical tensions, oil prices, climate change, IMF conditionality or slowing global demand. These matter. But many of Pakistan’s deepest economic setbacks have been self-inflicted: policies introduced with good intentions that ultimately undermine the objectives they were meant to achieve.
For too long, taxation has been one such own goal. Successive governments found it easier to deepen rather than broaden the tax base. Instead of bringing undertaxed segments of retail, real estate, agriculture and transport into the formal economy, they repeatedly relied on extracting more from businesses and salaried individuals who were already compliant. The latest federal budget deserves credit for beginning to reverse this trend by easing some of the burden on the formal sector. The challenge now is to build a medium-term tax strategy that broadens the base, lowers rates and creates a level playing field.
Trade policy has produced another own goal. For decades, Pakistan has relied on high tariffs to protect domestic industry. While temporary protection can help infant industries mature, permanent protection raises costs, weakens exporters and encourages firms to compete for policy favours rather than productivity. Meanwhile, countries such as Vietnam have built competitiveness through skills, logistics, export-oriented investment and integration into global value chains.
Some of Pakistan’s most expensive own goals have resulted from poor sequencing. Gwadar was developed before adequate road and rail connectivity. Thar’s coalfields advanced ahead of the transport and transmission infrastructure needed to maximise their value. Generation capacity expanded faster than the transmission system, leaving consumers to bear mounting capacity payments. These were not bad projects; they were poorly coordinated.
The same fragmentation extends across government. Tax policy is too often disconnected from industrial policy, education from labour market needs, mining from transport planning and energy from export competitiveness. Economies, like football teams, succeed when every player understands the overall game plan.
Another recurring own goal lies in how we measure success. We celebrate tax-to-GDP ratios without asking whether the tax base has expanded. We applaud gross foreign investment without examining whether it generates exports or net foreign exchange. We measure installed power capacity rather than affordable electricity delivered to productive users. Poor measures encourage poor policy.
Pakistan’s greatest opportunities lie in sectors where it enjoys genuine comparative advantage: high-value agriculture, livestock, food processing, mineral processing, tourism, pharmaceuticals, information technology and value-added textiles. Yet policy attention has too often been diverted towards preserving activities that remain dependent on protection instead of helping competitive sectors expand.
The best football teams rarely win through individual brilliance alone. They succeed because they communicate well, execute a coherent strategy, anticipate the next move and adjust tactics quickly when circumstances change. The same principles apply to nations. Good teamwork across governments and ministries, sound long-term planning, and the willingness to change course before problems become crises are hallmarks of successful economies as much as successful football teams.
External shocks will continue. But Pakistan’s greatest opportunity lies not in hoping for easier opponents or better conditions. It lies in avoiding the own goals that remain entirely within our control. Championship teams are not those that never make mistakes. They are those that learn from them – and stop repeating them.
An own goal need not define an entire tournament. Switzerland’s stoppage-time own goal against Qatar cost it victory in its opening match. But the Swiss regrouped, corrected their mistakes and went on to beat Bosnia and Herzegovina and Canada to finish top of their group. Successful football teams – and successful economies – are not those that never make mistakes. They are those that learn from them quickly, work together more effectively and avoid repeating them.
The writer is a former CEO of Unilever Pakistan and of the Pakistan Business Council.
