A Preliminary Input-Output Table for Large-Scale Industries in Pakistan

In: The Pakistan development review: PDR, Volume 2, Issue 1, p. 47-83

Abstract

As an approach to economic problems, the input-output analysis
is in the tradition of general equilibrium economics. However, it is a
general equilibrium analysis with numerical strength. It is a general
equilibrium theory because it analyzes all the industrial sectors of the
economy simul¬taneously with special emphasis on the production
relations among the industries. It is an approach with numerical
strength because the basic formulation of the theory is amenable to
statistical implementation in the econometric sense. Being such, this
approach can be, and has been, applied to provide numerical answers to
problems related to total economic mobilization of an economy, e.g., for
war, for peace or for economic development. For this reason, it has a
direct policy orientation; and, can be usefully applied to planning for
economic development. On account of the fact that it is a general
equilibrium theory with numerical strength, the input-output analysis is
not an inexpensive approach. This is due to the fact that stupendous
effort is involved in the collection and the processing of statistical
data, for all the major production sectors, as well as in tabulation and
computation. This is difficult even when the data are available, and
when the data are not available, an effort in this direction is thwarted
at the very initial stage. The standard reason given for not applying an
input-output approach in planning for economic development is that data
are not available. In this respect, Pakistan is a typical case. It is
the purpose of this paper to present a preliminary input-output table
for large-scale industries in Pakistan. As the base year for table, we
have selected calendar year 1955, primarily because for this year the
census of manufacturing industries is most detailed and most suitable
for our purpose. As far as we know, this table is the first of its kind.
However, in view of the data problem, the input-output table that will
be presented is only a preliminary one. Not only does it exclude all
production sectors