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.
What Actually Happened to the Famous “MNC Exit List”?
This is where the anti-Pakistan doom narrative also starts falling apart. A viral list repeatedly grouped P&G, Sanofi, Shell, Bayer, Telenor, Pfizer, TotalEnergies, Eli Lilly, Microsoft and Careem together under one emotionally explosive word: exited.
Except corporate transactions are not school attendance sheets. “Present” and “absent” are insufficient categories.
| Company | What actually happened | What the case tells Pakistan |
|---|---|---|
| P&G / Gillette | Direct manufacturing and commercial activities wound down; P&G moved toward third-party distribution, while Gillette pursued a delisting process | Genuine reduction of direct corporate footprint, but brands can continue in market |
| Sanofi | Sanofi’s controlling 52.87% shareholding was acquired by a Packages-led consortium; the company became Hoechst Pakistan | Foreign ownership changed while local pharmaceutical operations continued |
| Shell | Shell’s majority Pakistan shareholding was sold to Saudi-based Wafi Energy | Sponsor exit and ownership transfer, not disappearance of the retail network |
| Telenor | PTCL completed the acquisition of 100% of Telenor Pakistan and Orion Towers on December 31, 2025 | Foreign shareholder exit became a major Pakistani telecom consolidation |
| Pfizer | Pakistan’s competition regulator approved Lucky Core Industries’ acquisition of certain Pfizer Pakistan assets | Asset localisation and transfer require more precise language than “Pfizer vanished” |
| TotalEnergies | Its 50% stake in Total PARCO Pakistan was sold to Gunvor | Another foreign investor entered the ownership structure as TotalEnergies refocused |
| Microsoft | The local office closed and the model shifted toward partner-led, cloud-based delivery | Physical corporate presence reduced even though customer servicing did not simply cease |
| Careem | Ride-hailing operations were suspended in Pakistan | This was an actual service withdrawal tied to macro conditions, competition and capital allocation |
| Ingredion / Rafhan Maize | Majority ownership moved toward a Nishat-led consortium through an approved acquisition process | A multinational stake sale can simultaneously be foreign withdrawal and Pakistani capital expansion |
The Sanofi transaction was announced as the transfer of Sanofi’s 52.87% stake to a Packages-led consortium, and Hoechst Pakistan later described the local company as continuing the former Sanofi Pakistan operation. Shell sold its Pakistan stake to Wafi Energy, while TotalEnergies sold its 50% Total PARCO interest to Gunvor; in Total PARCO’s case, the underlying retail and lubricants activities were structured to continue. PTCL formally completed its acquisition of Telenor Pakistan and Orion Towers on December 31, 2025. Pakistan’s Competition Commission approved Lucky Core Industries’ purchase of certain Pfizer Pakistan assets.
This is exactly why I find both propaganda camps exhausting. One side takes every share sale, asset transfer, liaison-office closure and distributor transition and screams, “Everybody is escaping Pakistan.” The other side sees precisely the same transactions and announces, “Pakistan defeated Western multinationals.”
Sometimes the foreign shareholder is leaving.
Sometimes the product remains.
Sometimes a Pakistani group buys the assets.
Sometimes another foreign company buys the stake.
Sometimes a company’s entire global operating architecture has changed.
And sometimes, as in Careem’s case, the business directly states that Pakistan’s macroeconomic environment, competition and global capital allocation made further investment difficult to justify. Reuters reported Careem’s CEO citing the “challenging macroeconomic reality”, intensifying competition and global capital allocation when the ride-hailing service was suspended in Pakistan in July 2025.
Every case is separate. Refusing to analyse them separately is not patriotism. It is economic illiteracy wearing a flag.
But Let Us Stop Pretending Pakistan Has No Business Climate Problem
Here is where my disagreement with the “it is all global restructuring” school becomes considerably sharper.
Pakistan did, in fact, create a serious confidence problem when multinational companies were unable to freely repatriate dividends during the foreign-exchange crisis. The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry publicly said in January 2023 that dividend repatriation had effectively been on hold because of curbs on dollar outflows. At the same time, State Bank reserves fell to levels that analysts described as covering less than three weeks of imports.
Later repatriation improved significantly, but headquarters do not possess the memory of a goldfish. When a multinational board discovers that profits legally earned in one market can become difficult to transmit to shareholders because the host country has run short of dollars, that event enters its risk model.
From my own experience running an engineering and energy business in Pakistan, I find the casual treatment of operating friction almost insulting. Power cost is not a Twitter abstraction. Currency movement is not a television ticker. Tax treatment, banking delays, import restrictions, approvals and inconsistent interpretation by officials become line items, working-capital requirements and missed delivery dates. A Pakistani company often survives this environment because its founders are physically here, its capital is already trapped in the same currency and its entire nervous system has evolved around Pakistani unpredictability.
That does not automatically make us more efficient than P&G.
Sometimes it simply means we are better adapted to pain.
Pharmaceuticals expose the problem even more clearly. Reuters reported in March 2023 that pharmaceutical companies were struggling with losses caused by inflation and a weakened currency while the government delayed decisions on requested medicine price increases. Pakistani business analysts subsequently identified delayed pharmaceutical price approvals as one sector-specific reason multinational operators reconsidered their presence.
One may dislike pharmaceutical companies. One may accuse them of protecting margins. One may want stricter regulation. Fine. But freezing a regulated selling price while imported inputs and currency costs rise is not an industrial strategy. It is arithmetic denial.
