Daily Times

Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said that Pakistan had recently experienced a worst natural calamity in the form of countrywide floods caused by relentless torrential rains last year. These floods adversely affected 33 million across 94 districts of Pakistan and displaced 2 million households. He stated this while talking to the visiting US delegates who called on him today in Islamabad. The delegation was headed by the Counselor of the United States Department of State Mr. Derek Chollet. The US ambassador to Pakistan Mr. Donald Blame and others also joined the meeting.

Ahsan Iqbal said that the Government of Pakistan was working on the short term and long term plans under the Resilient, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Recovery Framework (4RF) for the the planning, financing, implementation and monitoring of recovery and reconstruction of the areas which had undergone unprecedented floods in 2022. Ahsan Iqbal stated that ignoring the exports sector and relying on the imports had been one of the key reasons of our failure on maintaining balance of payments. The current government is trying to divert orientation of our industrial and corporate sectors from domestic to foreign markets since it was the only way to earn dollars, increase foreign reserves and ensure balance of payments. Similarly, the government paying special focus on increasing the IT exports since almost two-third of our population comprised of the youth and they played key role in bringing Pakistan as the third largest country in the freelancing. The minister emphasised that Pakistani youth had greater potential and seamless talent in almost all walks of life and there are enormous opportunities for the US companies to collaborate with Pakistani companies which offer relatively less-costly services compared to India and other countries. Primarily, Pakistan wanted to train 10 thousand PhD from the top US universities in the coming ten years. The US delegates appreciated the government’s resolve to giving Pakistan as soft identity and focusing on improving the economic, energy, education, health, food and agricultural sectors.