Pakistan has an access problem

A Pakistani software engineer in Toronto wants to invest $200 in OGDC. A fund manager in Singapore has been tracking the KSE-100 for two years and is looking for a way to build exposure. A family office in Dubai, allocating across frontier markets, has Pakistan on its watchlist but no practical mechanism to act on that conviction.

None of them can invest without navigating a maze of foreign-exchange accounts, fragmented brokerage processes, and settlement systems built for a bygone era. This is not a diaspora problem but a demand problem. The capital is there, the interest is there too and the market has earned it. What is missing is a simple way to act.

Over the past three years, Pakistan’s equity market has quietly become one of the strongest-performing in the world. The KSE-100 returned over 50% last year, and global allocators have started paying attention. When a market begins to outperform, curiosity follows. And curiosity always leads to the same question: How do I invest in it?

Right now, there is no simple answer. What investors encounter instead is friction, layers of operational complexity that turn interest into hesitation and conviction into inaction.

Pakistan’s challenge is often misunderstood. We have 450,000 equity investors in a country of 250 million people. Domestic participation is limited, and the 6.9 million Pakistanis living abroad send back over $38 billion annually, yet invest almost none of it in the local equity market. And the growing pool of international investors paying attention has no clear entry point either. Look closely, and these are not three different problems. They are domestic investors not participating, overseas Pakistanis are unable to invest and global capital is unable to enter. It is a single problem with three sides. The problem is access.

Pakistan does not have an investment problem. It has an access problem, and access determines valuation.

The global context in which this sits matters. We are living through the early stages of the largest restructuring of capital markets since the creation of the stock exchange. Larry Fink, whose firm BlackRock manages nearly $150 billion in assets connected to digital products and operates the world’s largest tokenized fund, described it plainly in his 2026 annual letter to shareholders: tokenisation, he wrote, is roughly where the internet was in 1996, and the plumbing of the global financial system is being rebuilt to allow any asset to be held in any wallet, anywhere.

The numbers behind that thesis are substantial. The global bond market alone sits at $140 trillion. Global equities add another $100 trillion to that, and private credit, real estate, commodities and infrastructure extend the addressable universe further still. In simple terms, tokenisation turns assets such as stocks, fixed-income instruments or real estate into digital units that can be accessed from anywhere.

Against that scale, the tokenised share of real-world assets today stands at $30 billion, up 9.6% in the last 30 days alone. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Circle, Ondo, Centrifuge. One hundred and sixty-eight platforms are live globally across every major asset class. This is not one company or one jurisdiction making a speculative bet. It is the early innings of the biggest capital migration in history, and the direction is not in question.

This matters most for markets like Pakistan. Frontier markets do not trade at a discount simply because of fundamentals; they trade at a discount because the pool of potential buyers is constrained. Limited access narrows participation, and narrow participation suppresses valuation. Access is not a detail; it is a demand and, unlike many structural challenges, it is one of the most fixable.

When access barriers fall, the dynamics change. The same investor who can buy Apple or Saudi Aramco from a single interface should be able to buy OGDC or HBL with equal ease. When that becomes possible, Pakistani companies are no longer competing only for domestic capital but for allocation from a global pool.

The effect is straightforward: more access leads to more participants, more participants lead to stronger demand discovery, stronger demand supports fairer valuations, better valuations lower the cost of capital – and that is how access becomes capital formation.

This is where the opportunity becomes tangible. Instead of asking global investors to navigate local complexity, Pakistan can present itself through simple, globally legible products. For example, a curated basket of leading Pakistani companies – an index that represents the country’s growth story. Digital wrappers that allow investors anywhere to gain exposure without rebuilding infrastructure from scratch. This is not about replacing the existing market; it will simply multiply reach exponentially.

It is also not only about Pakistanis abroad looking inward, but also about the world looking at Pakistan and, for the first time, finding a door that opens and the diaspora is the natural starting point. Even if a small percentage of overseas Pakistanis allocate a portion of their capital through accessible instruments, the inflows alone would be significant. But that is only the floor; the real opportunity begins when Pakistan becomes investable for anyone, anywhere, who wants exposure.

When access improves, the effects compound. A broader investor base deepens liquidity, which then reduces perceived risk, and lower risk attracts more capital. And companies that grow with better-priced capital build the track record that brings the next wave of attention. Access and valuation reinforce each other & the markets that recognise this early benefit disproportionately.

Other jurisdictions have already moved in this direction. Singapore built a tokenisation framework through Project Guardian in under two years, bringing together major financial institutions to test and deploy new market infrastructure. The UAE has done the same within the DIFC.

Pakistan is already being noticed on every front. The performance is real and the interest is growing with higher mindshare capture at every front. The engineer in Toronto, the fund manager in Singapore, the family office in Dubai, they are not waiting for a narrative; they are waiting for easier access.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange has done its job. Sustained performance has placed the market on the global map. The next phase is not about proving the opportunity; it is simply about making that opportunity reachable. Because in capital markets, attention does not automatically translate into investment, access is what converts interest into capital.

And what lies on the other side of that access is larger than just the diaspora sending money home. It is the integration of Pakistan into the global flow of capital itself.

The writer is the chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA).

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

Originally published in The News