CPEC - Show me the money!

Ever since China’s premier Xi Jinping visited Pakistan and announced the mammoth US$46 bn investment in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor CPEC, I have been having visions of 12 lane highways stretching from the Kunjerab pass all the way down to Gwadar, criss crossing across Pakistan like a plate of spaghetti bolognaise with sprouting electricity megawatt generating stations in each province, new industrial towns and cities rising in the sands of Baluchistan and Sindh just like in the animated Bahria town ads and off course the “sound barrier breaking” bullet trains to rival those of Japan. Pakistan all set to move into the fast lane of the global economic growth highway, leaving jealously behind, Dubai, Bahrain and Oman. Take that!

Is the above all achievable? Even if we play out the CPEC strategic investment on paper from the point of view of an accounting professional, I can certainly say that we need to get our public sector financial management in order. A large amount of the CPEC money may be injected into the arteries and veins of our public sector system (through sub-contracts to the NLCs and FWOs) where it has to be tracked like an iodine radio tracer in a heart bi-pass patient. CPEC money has to flow smoothly and transparently towards its target to provide economic benefits to Chinese investors and secondly to the host country via jobs and complementing goods and services, setting off a chain reaction or a Keynesian multiplier “kushali” effect. There is no STOP it’s all GO GO GO………………….

The Chinese will bring with them their own cultural business nuances that are readily visible all across the world but none more so than in Africa where our “all-weather friend” is extracting the continent of its minerals for the Q mobiles that we must have! Are we ready to mix Pakistan “Kinder” corporate governance with the Chinese version? How do Chinese govern their boards? how do they meet their compliance needs? do they use IFRS? Is there a Chinese version of SOX that will require our finance professionals to adopt diverse approaches to internal and external financial reporting under CPEC?

On paper WE CAN rise to the financial management challenge! We have a youth bulge the size of a South American country. Youth our one and only prized natural resource, no extraction required, it’s an open face quarry waiting for artisanal corporate miners to extract them, which thanks to our fecundity will never run out. No doubt many of the unskilled and semi-skilled twentysomethings will get manual labor jobs like Navies to construct those visionary 12 lane highways and lay down tracks from Kunjerab pass to Gwadar, but we will also need accountants and lots of them! I wish I had an algorithm formula into which I could feed in the variables of CPEC and it would give me the number of qualified accountants needed to financially manage and sustain the US$46bn, but I don’t have one!! But my guess is that this being the single largest FDI injection into the gluteus maximus of Pakistan, in history, will need more than just “B-Commerz” to manage it? If we can manage this investment as smoothly as a babies bottom we will not only ensure that the US$46bn morphs into billions more through a triple bottom lined sustained multiplier affect, but also allow Pakistan an air punching slam dunking moment to say to the world “can we have some MORE!”