Daily Times

Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal on Thursday said that Pakistan desperately needed measures to bring the country’s economy out of crisis through sustainable export led economic growth.

“The sustainable economic growth is possible only through increasing productivity that leads to more exports and higher economic growth”, the minister said while addressing the closing ceremony of a two-day international conference on Productivity Accreditation and Certification, organized by National Productivity Organization (NPO) on the occasion of APO’s Diamond Jubilee.

Ahsan Iqbal said the country had been facing sheer foreign exchange reserves and balance of payment crisis for long time due to slow growth in exports. “Whenever we cross 6 percent of GDP growth, the government faces dollar shortage issue due to which we have to put emergency brake on the economic growth to resolve the balance of payment crisis,” he added.

In 2018, he said the PML-N government launched the productivity initiative with the help of Asian Productivity Organization (APO) aimed at increasing productivity in the country by ensuring quality and innovation. However, he said the government was changed soon and initiative could not continue due to change in the government. Ahsan Iqbal maintained that the sustainable economic development of the country was directly linked to political stability and continuity in the policies.

He said that only in agriculture sector, Pakistan could earn additional US$10 to $12 billion per year by increasing per acre yield of various crops up to 80 percent to 300%, and this increase was quite possible by adopting international standards of growing the crops. Meanwhile, participating as chief guest in another event titled “Dialogue on Global Development initiative towards Global Security” here Thursday, the minister said that the whole world was going through economic crisis as the world had not yet recovered from the shock of the Covid 19 Pandemic.

The Minister remarked that commodity prices rose worldwide due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and that subsequently gripped the world with high inflation trend. He further added that balance of payments and economic crisis today had assumed as a global phenomena leading to slowing down the execution of Sustainable Development Goals worldwide.

The minister asserted that today, the poor people of Pakistan were paying the price of climate change. The flood disaster that hit the country affected 33 million people adding that children and mothers in the camps, were reeling undernourished. “We have to feed an entire generation and the task of bringing people back has posed serious challenges for the governmnet.”

Minister stated that China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was the biggest project of the Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan that had helped build Pakistan’s infrastructure and built a new information highway.

He lamented that unfortunately, CPEC could not keep up with the speed as it was planned and the establishment of industrial zones were delayed consequently. He added that the future of the economy depended upon the export driven economy. The minister added that in 2013, the world saw Pakistan as a security risk while myths were doing the rounds to defame the country. However, we in our last term through stabilizing the economy, made the country investment friendly, he expressed.

While commenting on the Global Initiative Dialogue, the minister noted that the dialogue offered ample opportunities to understand the global dynamics on global security adding that a country where political instability and discontinuity of policies prevailed could not tread the path of progress and prosperity.