No, a Pakistani razor company did not beat Gillette so badly that Procter & Gamble packed its bags and fled Pakistan. And no, P&G’s decision by itself proves that Pakistan has become an economic graveyard where every international company is desperately looking for the emergency exit. Both stories are emotionally satisfying, politically convenient and economically lazy.
The real story is much more uncomfortable because it denies everybody their favourite propaganda. P&G officially placed its Pakistan decision inside a wider global restructuring programme under which the consumer giant planned to cut around 7,000 jobs over two years, simplify its organisation and exit selected categories, brands and markets. In Pakistan, however, the decision translated into something very specific: P&G said it would wind down manufacturing and commercial activities and continue serving Pakistani consumers through third-party distributors and other regional operations. Gillette Pakistan separately entered a process that included evaluating delisting from the Pakistan Stock Exchange; by February 2026, PSX disclosures showed a voluntary delisting application, with further delisting-related notices appearing in subsequent months.
That distinction matters.
Claim: P&G did not announce that Pakistani FMCG companies had defeated it. P&G announced a global restructuring and chose a distributor-led operating model for Pakistan.
But here is the part our official cheerleaders should not conveniently delete either: when a multinational restructures globally, it does not randomly throw darts at a world map to decide where direct operations are worth maintaining. Corporate headquarters examine margins, growth, currency risks, taxation, capital mobility, regulatory complexity, management cost and the strategic value of maintaining people and assets inside a country. My reading — and this is explicitly an inference from the disclosed restructuring combined with Pakistan’s documented business frictions — is that global restructuring created the decision window, while Pakistan failed to make a sufficiently powerful case for retaining the heavier direct operating model. Reuters documented P&G’s global portfolio and workforce overhaul, while Pakistani business analysts separately identified taxes, the weaker rupee, shrinking margins, local competition and regulatory conditions among the pressures that can turn a global review into a local withdrawal.
That is not “Pakistan has collapsed.”
That is also not “Treet destroyed Gillette.”
It is worse than a slogan because it requires us to think.
The Gillette Financials Do Not Support Fairytale Economics
The easiest social-media argument was that Gillette simply performed badly, therefore the government and Pakistan’s broader investment climate had nothing to do with the decision. Gillette Pakistan’s own PSX data certainly show a company under pressure, but the figures do not magically identify the cause of that pressure as a heroic local razor uprising.
| Financial year | Sales, PKR billion | Profit after tax, PKR million | Net profit margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2.453 | -22.158 | -0.90% |
| 2023 | 3.025 | 113.899 | 3.77% |
| 2024 | 1.502 | 101.203 | 6.74% |
| 2025 | 1.720 | -25.950 | -1.51% |
Source note: Figures are based on the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s GLPL financial summary, which states that its comparative data may be standardised and that issuer reports remain the definitive “as reported” source.
Look carefully. Sales collapsed between 2023 and 2024, recovered somewhat in 2025 and yet the company fell back into a loss. That is evidence of a troubled operating picture. It is not evidence that a particular Pakistani competitor displaced Gillette, because proving that argument would require credible category-level market-share data, pricing analysis, channel penetration and evidence of consumer substitution.
Saying “nobody uses Treet, everybody uses Gillette” is anecdotal. Saying “Tibbet destroyed Safeguard in rural Pakistan” is also anecdotal unless the person presents measurable market data. A Pakistani patriot should demand better evidence, not lower the standard of proof merely because the conclusion sounds good for Pakistan.
I want Pakistani manufacturing to win. Precisely because I want it to win, I refuse to issue it imaginary medals.
