The India Comparison Is the Part Nobody Wants to Discuss
The most uncomfortable image in this entire debate was not the Gillette Pakistan regulatory letter.
It was the image of P&G expanding high-value capability in Hyderabad, India.
We should be careful here because there is no evidence that a Pakistani Gillette job was placed in a box and shipped directly to Hyderabad. That would be a false causal claim. Yet P&G’s own careers infrastructure currently lists information-technology roles in Nanakramguda, Hyderabad, illustrating exactly how global groups increasingly concentrate technology and high-value corporate functions in regional centres rather than maintaining the same footprint in every market.
This is the actual competition Pakistan faces.
Not Pakistan versus P&G.
Pakistan versus the other countries inside P&G’s capital-allocation spreadsheet.
When P&G decides where to locate technology talent, when Microsoft decides whether it needs a local office or regional partners, when a pharmaceutical group decides whether manufacturing complexity is worth carrying, Pakistan is competing against India, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and other regional hubs for corporate functions, management attention and future capital.
The Asian Development Bank’s April 2026 outlook forecast Pakistan’s growth improving, but its published regional data still placed Pakistan’s growth trajectory well below some major regional economies. The Samaa report shared in this debate captured that wider anxiety, although the primary ADB material is the stronger citation base.
We cannot respond to a regional competitiveness gap by posting photographs of cattle imports and making jokes about “multinational cows.”
Pakistanis are funny. I appreciate the joke.
Capital markets are not laughing.
Local Ownership Is an Opportunity — but Imports Can Swallow the Opportunity First
Now let us return to the patriotic argument because there is a valuable idea buried beneath the bad analysis.
When an MNC reduces local manufacturing, market space does open.
The question is who fills it.
A Pakistani manufacturer?
A Pakistani contract manufacturer?
A foreign regional plant supplying Pakistan through distributors?
Or a Chinese import sitting on a local wholesaler’s shelf?
This distinction is everything.
P&G explicitly said the Pakistani market would continue to be served through other regional operations and a third-party distribution model. Therefore, the automatic result of P&G winding down local manufacturing is not the coronation of Pakistani FMCG companies. Imported P&G products can continue competing against Pakistani goods, now through a lighter operating structure.
That is why “good riddance, local companies will take over” is not a policy.
It is a wish.
A genuine Pakistan-first response would examine which P&G categories were manufactured locally, identify the machinery and technical requirements needed to substitute that output, study packaging and chemical input dependency, map distributor access, quantify electricity and financing costs and then create a five-year pathway for Pakistani companies to win the shelf.
This is where I see a direct connection with my earlier analysis of Rafhan Maize and the Nishat Group. Ownership localisation can be strategically important, but the serious question is what happens to technology, reinvestment, exports, management systems and industrial capacity after ownership changes. The same analytical discipline appears in my discussion of the Special Investment Facilitation Council and asset-sale politics, because an asset changing hands is not automatically an economic victory or defeat. Investors looking at the stock market rather than the screaming match should also understand why I have repeatedly argued for mechanical analysis over headlines in my PSX Outlook 2026.
Pakistan needs fewer victory announcements.
Pakistan needs post-transaction scorecards.
