Impact of COVID-19 on Pakistan’s economic development: A sector-wise analysis

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has significantly hampered economic development. The ongoing pandemic has posed challenges to economies and altered global lifestyles, with people mostly staying at home and working from home if possible. As a result, the development of various sectors of the economy is impacted significantly. The present study aims to scrutinize the impact of COVID-19 on Pakistan’s economy focusing on the three main sectors such as services, industrial, and agriculture. The Gross National Product (GNP) of the respective sector is used to measure economic development, and COVID-19 is proxied through total coronavirus cases and the number of infected people (active cases). The data covered in the study range from 2020M2 to 2022M4. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) unit root tests are used to ensure that the variables are stationary at the level. The empirical investigation is carried out by employing the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. The findings reveal that both the proxies of COVID-19 have a negative and significant impact on all sectors, however, the size differs depending on the nature of these sectors. As such, the impact on the service and industrial sectors is larger than the impact on agriculture. The findings imply that Pakistani ministries should work cooperatively to align the development policies in the aftermath of COVID-19 to improve sectoral development and in turn the overall development of the economy.