The pattern is clear: as foreign equity retreated, domestic capital – bank-led, debt-flavoured, and increasingly homegrown – stepped into the gap. The ecosystem is becoming less dependent on the mood of investors in San Francisco and Dubai.

None of this means Pakistan has fixed itself. The interviews behind this research surface a list of self-inflicted wounds that no amount of investor cleverness can fully route around.

The state regulates as if it were trying to discourage the very thing it claims to want. Hundreds of non-banking financial companies sit in a backlog at the securities regulator, while fintech firms wait – sometimes for more than two years – for “in-principle approval” from the central bank. New companies must clear security vetting that can take months. Increasingly, even forming a joint venture abroad requires bureaucratic permission. Government departments work in silos, with the IT ministry and the central bank often pulling in different directions, so........

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