The Urban Platform for Local Economic Development (LED) in Faisalabad was a UNDP Pakistan-commissioned initiative to design and pilot a coordinated institutional mechanism for aligning public and private investment around shared economic development goals in Faisalabad — Pakistan’s third-largest city and its primary industrial hub. Dr. Ghulam Mohey-ud-din served as Team Lead on this PKR 8 million engagement, directing the full scope of work from economic diagnostics through to governance model design for the Faisalabad LED platform.
Strategic Context
Faisalabad’s economic significance is immense — the city is home to Pakistan’s most concentrated textile manufacturing cluster, a major agro-processing sector, and rapidly growing logistics infrastructure serving Central Punjab. Yet despite this economic weight, a critical institutional gap persisted: no coordinated platform existed to systematically align private investment, public infrastructure development, skills training, and economic governance toward shared local economic development priorities. Investment decisions remained fragmented across actors, economic intelligence systems were weak, and there was no shared institutional space for aligning public and private action around common economic goals. The Urban Platform for LED project was designed to close this gap through a structured design and pilot process.
Analytical Approach and Methodology
The project’s analytical approach began with a rapid urban economic LED baseline assessment of Faisalabad, mapping the city’s economic assets, constraints, and actor networks across its key sectors — textiles, light manufacturing, agro-processing, and logistics. This assessment documented Faisalabad’s economic performance, identified the most significant coordination failures affecting local economic development, and mapped the full ecosystem of stakeholders including city government, chambers of commerce and industry, industrial estate authorities, vocational training institutions, and financial institutions. The evidence base informed the design of a Platform Governance Model specifying the institutional structure, coordination mechanisms, data and intelligence infrastructure, and priority action areas for the LED platform. Extensive stakeholder engagement ensured the design was grounded in local political economy realities and had buy-in from key actors.
Key Deliverables
- Faisalabad Urban Economic Baseline and Diagnostic Report — comprehensive local economic development assessment
- Stakeholder Mapping and Actor Network Analysis — full ecosystem of LED actors in Faisalabad
- LED Platform Design: Governance Model and Institutional Architecture — blueprint for the coordinating platform
- Priority Action Framework for LED implementation — sequenced activities for platform launch
- Pilot roadmap and resource mobilisation strategy for UNDP and city government
Outcomes and Impact
The project delivered a technically grounded and politically viable blueprint for Faisalabad’s first coordinated local economic development platform. The design provided UNDP Pakistan and city authorities with a ready-to-implement governance framework, positioning the platform for integration into broader urban development programming and UNDP’s wider local governance support work in Punjab. The engagement reflects Dr. Mohey-ud-din’s expertise in urban economic development, local governance design, and Pakistan’s industrial cities — competencies developed across his portfolio of urban economic planning, UNDP advisory, and provincial government work in Punjab and across South Asia.