Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s advice to probationers passing out of the 41st Specialised Diplomatic Course, that “economic diplomacy is a blueprint to leverage our diplomatic assets in the service of our development agenda”, is appreciated as the way forward. But he wasn’t quite right about such initiatives not being tried before. Pakistan did, in fact, reach out and even found new export destinations when the government developed a biting trade imbalance during the Musharraf years, and then foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri and Commerce Minister Razzaq Dawood, also the present PM’s special advisor on commerce, travelled as far as the depths of Africa and Latin America to carve out new markets for Pakistani products. The bigger problem is that quite often such policies are not pursued after there is a change of guard in Islamabad; which is unfortunate since export revenue is good for the whole state and all people inside it, not just one political leader or party. Therefore the focus now, too, should be on implementing policies that endure the test of time as well as general elections. This is truer now than ever before because the country faces a make-or-break moment at least as far as the economy is concerned. And failure to ramp up export earnings will lead to an implosion of the current account sooner rather than later. FM Qureshi is right that the foreign ministry should lead the process of this necessary change. Pakistani ambassadors abroad should always be on the lookout for enhanced trading opportunities and not be afraid to think out of the box. Pakistan has the chance to make this adjustment now more than ever, as much of the world is still struggling with Covid lockdowns, so this opportunity should not be wasted. The government should, in fact, go a step further and push economic diplomacy further high on the priority list within the foreign ministry. *