The ninth Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) leaders' summit in Xiamen, China, had begun with President Xi's speech whose content had until then epitomized the values of capitalism and more specifically those of the pre-Trump United States of America rather than of communist China. Xi stated: "Only openness delivers progress, and only inclusiveness sustains such progress. Due to sluggish global growth in recent years, such issues as uneven development, inadequate governance and deficit of fairness have become more acute, and protectionism and inward-looking mentality are on the rise... we should promote the building of an open global economy, advance trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, jointly build new global value chains, and rebalance economic globalization. Doing so will bring benefits to people across the world". It is such sentiments increasingly expressed by President Xi in marked contrast to the stance taken by President Trump in July 2017 during the G20 summit whose "America First" platform is threatening American pullout from numerous multilateral trade deals, including NAFTA, trade with China and Mexico and negotiations that account for the world looking more and more at President Xi rather than Trump for guidance and leadership.

The Chinese President acknowledged that the business community of the five BRICS countries "is the main force driving our economic development. I hope you will leverage your strengths in terms of information, technology and funding to launch more practical and mutually beneficial cooperation projects that benefit our countries and peoples. What you do will help spur economic and social development and improve people's lives. The Chinese government will continue to encourage Chinese companies to operate and take root in other countries, and likewise, we also warmly welcome foreign companies to invest and operate in China". This concept is fully supported by the PML-N government but unfortunately only rhetorically. Pakistan's ease of doing business index which is a critical component of ensuring that the business community is able to play its due role in development has been deteriorating over the past four years as per the World Bank and this in spite of the fact that the Dar-led Finance Ministry prepared a draft policy to improve this index. Implementation of good policy measures remains poor in Pakistan sourced to systemic governance issues.

President Xi in his opening remarks also stated that "the past decade has seen the BRICS countries endeavouring to fulfil their international responsibility. Committed to multilateralism, fairness and justice, our five countries have staked out our positions on major regional and international issues and made our proposals to address them. We have promoted reform of global economic governance to increase the representation and say of emerging market and developing countries. As a champion of development, we have taken the lead in implementing the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, and engaged in close dialogue and cooperation with other developing countries to pursue development through unity". What is noteworthy in this statement from an economist's point of view is that China is supporting multilateralism, and instead of reaffirming the predominance of developed economies (through control of multilateral entities, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and its lesser partner Asian Development Bank whose loan conditionalities have rarely fuelled development) to do so through a commitment to 'fairness and justice.'

And finally, President Xi highlighted the need to "eliminate impediments to economic development through reform, remove systemic and institutional barriers, and energize the market and society, so as to achieve better quality, more resilient and sustainable growth". Our government would do well to follow this sage advice instead of relying on the advice of the IMF that has supported higher revenue (and not reforming the tax structure which is unfair and anomalous), reducing the deficit as opposed to supporting pro-growth policies and formulating good policies but allowing poor governance as well as systemic and institutional barriers to continue to prevail and abused to protect influential individuals and groups.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017