Pakistan
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Their exports are food, gold, diamonds, logistics or a small share of output, which AI neither threatens nor much boosts, so AI reaches them mainly through their own firms and governments.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
A large share of the workforce remains in agriculture and informal activity. This provides some initial insulation from cognitive automation but also limits the speed at which existing workplaces can capture productivity gains.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Pakistan starts
Pakistan enters the AGI era as a conditional demographic giant: scale and youth are the asset, but only if power, capital and connectivity arrive in time. Its 255 million people and catch-up headroom of 4.2 out of 5 mark the potential — few economies have more room to close the gap with the frontier. The complements are thin. Compute and energy access scores just 1.2, the mark of chronic power shortfalls, circular debt in the electricity sector and almost no data center capacity. Physical build speed is 2.9 and its demographics-and-migration score is 2.3, both below its archetype's norm. Geopolitical positioning, at 3.5, is a relative strength: Pakistan hedges between China's CPEC investments and Western ties. At about $1,596 per person, this is a lower-middle-income economy. Ten-year trend growth of 3.7% a year has not kept pace with its population.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Pakistan would sit almost on its own trend: 3.8% growth a year, 47th of 157. Its steady climb would rest on domestic demand and its young workforce, not on AI. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would build over two decades and reach 7.2% a year once AGI matures around 2045. Yet its rank would fall to 96th, because a gradual world rewards the compute, skills and build speed Pakistan lacks, and faster-moving economies pull ahead. An economy growing at 7.2% doubles in ten years. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 8.1% a year from the early 2030s, a doubling roughly every nine years, and the rank would recover to 85th. Both AGI paths beat Pakistan's own history, but neither keeps pace with a world racing ahead. Politics could slow or redirect any of these paths. How Pakistanis and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost the same until about 2030. In all three, the late 2020s add only fractions of a point to growth. So watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. Pakistan's own signals would arrive earlier than the growth data: the order books of its IT and freelance-services exporters, any hyperscaler commitment on Pakistani soil, and financial close on CPEC power and grid projects.
If growth goes explosive
Explosive is relative, and for Pakistan the honest word is modest. At 7.2% to 8.1% growth a year, the economy would run ahead of its own past, doubling every nine or ten years. But the frontier would compound far faster — near 20% in a gradual world, close to 40% in a fast one — and even South Asia's median would outpace it. This is catch-up by Pakistan's own history and relative decline against the leaders. At that pace, a child born today would reach adulthood in an economy several times larger, and rising wages at home could ease the pressure on young Pakistanis to emigrate for work. There is a way this leaves Pakistan worse off. Its compute is rented, not owned: with a 1.2 score, it would depend on chips and cloud capacity priced and rationed abroad, a rule-taker inside another power's chip regime. Skilled workers could leave faster than they are trained. The hedge is to own capacity and keep talent at home. Even then, the pace-setter would shift to the state, testing whether NEPRA, the power distributors and provincial permitting offices can clear projects and connect new load fast enough.
What Pakistan can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two of them pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is AI diffusion capacity, at 2.4. Digital skills, deployment-friendly rules and digitized government services carry real weight even in the skeptic's world, so building them is a no-regret move Pakistan can start today. The second is physical build speed, at 2.9. Statutory time limits on permits, pre-zoned industrial land and transmission built ahead of demand strengthen the economy under every scenario. The third lever is the bet. Compute and energy access, at 1.2, barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary, but under a fast takeoff it becomes Pakistan's single largest lever, carrying the highest weight of any factor. Closing it means fixing the power sector, fast-tracking generation and grid, and packaging power and land to attract data center investment. Pakistan can adapt a working model from its largest neighbor: India's IndiaAI Mission pools subsidized GPU capacity for startups and researchers, turning scarce compute into shared national infrastructure. A cautious government can act on the two no-regret levers now and lose nothing if the skeptics are right. Open the atlas's policy editor to see how shifting these scores changes Pakistan's path under each scenario.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Pakistan’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Pakistan: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.