Alternate Trade Policy Thinking & Governance in Pakistan | SPRC Fellowship 2026

On 21 August 2026, the Social Policy Resource Centre (SPRC) hosted the Concluding Ceremony of the SPRC Trade Policy Fellowship Programe 2026 in Islamabad. Five research fellows presented their findings on how Pakistan's National Tariff Policy is working in practice, before a senior panel of experts from the Ministry of Commerce. This is the full recording of the session. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP The SPRC Trade Policy Fellowship Programe 2026 brought together five emerging researchers for ten weeks of intensive training on Pakistan's trade policies in general, and on Strategic Trade Policy Frameworks in particular. A key component was an 18-session course on Alternative Trade Policy Thinking, delivered in partnership with the Pakistan Institute of Trade and Development (PITAD), alongside young Commerce and Trade Officers — putting researchers and practitioners in the same room. In the research component, each fellow produced independent work on the implementation of the National Tariff Policy: the policy issues that shape how effective tariff reform actually is, and what that means for Pakistan's trade competitiveness and industrial development. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RESEARCH FELLOWS, SPRC Mr. Kamran Abbas Haider, Research Fellow, SPRC Mr. Shahzaib Imran, Research Fellow, SPRC Ms. Zainab Sheikh, Research Fellow, SPRC Ms. Kashfa Anwar, Research Associate, SPRC Mr. Mujtaba Husnain, Research Fellow, SPRC ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WITH THANKS TO Ministry of Commerce Syed Hamid Ali Khan, Special Secretary Dr. Muhammad Ashfaq, Joint Secretary Mr. Khizar Hayat, Secretary, National Tariff Commission Mr. Shafiq A. Shehzad, Director General Trade Policy Pakistan Institute of Trade and Development (PITAD) Mr. Sohail Ahmad, Director Training Mr. Salman Jamil, Deputy Director (Trg/Admin) and the Assistant Directors and young Commerce and Trade Officers of PITAD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT SPRC The Social Policy Resource Centre is an independent, not-for-profit think tank based in Islamabad, working to strengthen evidence-based policy research and share it with policymakers, practitioners and the wider policy community. Alternative thinking for better policy. Executive Director: Dr. Safdar A. Sohail Website: https://www.sprc.org.pk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/soci... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sprc_islama... #SPRC #TradePolicy #Pakistan #NationalTariffPolicy #PITAD #PublicPolicy