Evidence-based strategy for special economic zones, industrial cities, and investment corridors — from concept design through operational frameworks.
Request ConsultationGovernments across the GCC and South Asia have invested heavily in special economic zones, industrial cities, and export processing areas — yet the gap between zone designation and zone performance remains wide. Zones are frequently developed as real estate instruments rather than productive ecosystems. Sector targeting is driven by political convenience rather than comparative advantage analysis. Governance frameworks are borrowed wholesale from international templates without calibration to local regulatory capacity or investor expectations.
The result is underoccupied infrastructure, incentive regimes that attract footloose investors rather than anchoring productive capacity, and zones that fail to generate the upstream and downstream linkages that justify their public subsidy. Development finance institutions and national planning bodies commissioning SEZ feasibility or review work increasingly require independent advisors who can interrogate both the economic logic and the institutional architecture of a proposed zone — not simply validate a pre-determined political decision.
SEZ strategy work is structured around three diagnostic layers that must align before a zone can be expected to perform. The first is economic rationale: what market failure or agglomeration opportunity justifies the zone, and is the proposed sector mix consistent with the territory's factor endowments, trade connectivity, and existing firm capabilities? This layer draws on revealed comparative advantage calculations, input-output linkage analysis, and, where available, establishment census data to ground-truth the demand assumptions.
The second layer is spatial logic: is the site selection defensible on accessibility, infrastructure cost, and labour catchment grounds? GIS-based analysis maps transport connectivity, utility service areas, and workforce proximity to evaluate whether the zone's location supports or undermines its economic proposition. Industrial land supply benchmarking against comparator zones establishes whether the development programme is correctly scaled.
The third layer is governance architecture: what one-stop-shop arrangements, licensing frameworks, and dispute resolution mechanisms are required to make the zone competitive with regional peers? Institutional benchmarking against OECD, UNIDO, and World Bank SEZ best-practice frameworks informs recommendations that are grounded in what regulators in comparable jurisdictions have actually implemented, rather than aspirational templates that exceed local administrative capacity.
Case Study
The Yanbu Industrial City Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Pre-Feasibility Study was a comprehensive economic advisory engagement commissioned by the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) — the Saudi Arabian government authority…
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I worked on the Punjab Spatial Strategy (PSS)—a province-wide spatial planning framework developed to embed a spatial dimension into Punjab’s development process, strengthen integrated spatial planning, and guide Punjab’s transformation toward a more economically developed and sustainable trajectory.
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Labour Economist and Project Lead on Punjab's first province-wide census of small and cottage industries — designing and executing a 24-month, PKR 166 million enumeration that produced foundational data for industrial policy and skills planning.
View Full Case Study →Engagements are typically structured in phases aligned to project development milestones — concept validation, detailed strategy, and implementation support. Assignments range from focused diagnostic reviews of four to six weeks to multi-phase advisory mandates of six to eighteen months. Procurement under World Bank, UNIDO, IFC, or bilateral frameworks is accommodated.
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