Although, according to Business Insider’s report 2018, Pakistan, is one of the 25 most powerful nations in the world, currently its economy is facing issues of falling growth rate, budget deficits, balance of payments, limited foreign exchange reserves, falling exports, unemployment and piling up of the domestic and foreign debt burden. It is a known fact that a country can only be considered strong and stable if it has got a progressive economy which is free of the aforementioned problems. Somehow, to run the affairs of the state and handle development projects, the previous two governments in Pakistan depended too much on taking domestic and foreign loans, adopted spendthrift policies, and undertook many non productive development projects, rather than create domestic resources by expanding the country’s tax base, improving tax collection system, and focusing on export oriented economic policies. Resultantly, a huge quantity of foreign and domestic loans have piled up with no strategy to repay those. Hence, the newly inducted government in Pakistan should work on making long term, and sustainable economic policies, to resolve Pakistan’s economic woes quickly, the government also needs to adopt policies which can enhance economic growth, employment, exports and foreign exchange reserves, in a short time frame. Some suggestions in this regard are discussed in the ensuing paragraphs. To increase economic growth and exports in a short time frame, it is very important to focus on important sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, industry, including small industries, value addition and the provision and export of services. For increasing exports it is important to make our agricultural and industrial goods competitive in foreign markets, both quality and price wise. That can be done by facilitating the reduction in the cost of production and focusing on improving quality of products through value addition and adopting better marketing strategies. Exports can also be increased by focusing on small industries. In this regard, Pakistan should keep in view that a tiny country like Singapore’s exports were 326 percent of its GDP in 2015, and it has boosted its exports by exporting electronics, chemicals and services. Due to export earnings Singapore’s foreign exchange reserves are US dollars 290 billion, whereas Pakistan has only 14 billion US dollars as reserves. To reduce the burden of development expenditures on our budget, it would be wise for the government to attract domestic and foreign investment. This should be done by law and policy making to provide required facilities to the investors. The foreign investors should also be convinced to purchase raw materials for their projects from Pakistan, so that Pakistan can also get profit by selling its raw materials and avail employment opportunities for its people. Another important step to be taken by the Pakistan government is to focus on human resource development. This needs to be done to qualify Pakistani people with technical skills to avail the employment opportunities abroad, especially in the Gulf countries, to earn valuable foreign exchange. Previously, the available technical institutions were not handled efficiently to produce quality manpower and in sufficient numbers. For increasing exports it is important to make our agricultural and industrial goods competitive in foreign markets, both quality and price wise. That can be done by facilitating the reduction in the cost of production and focusing on improving quality of products through value addition and adopting better marketing strategies Now, the management of the human resource development has to be organized on scientific bases to produce quality skilled manpower on a large scale. In this case we can take the example of the Philippine, which has become one of the largest migrant-sending countries, especially in the nursing field with its state institutions playing a key role in training the manpower. To reduce budget deficits and debt burden, it is extremely important to broaden the tax base in the country. In Pakistan, compared to the number of its earning population, the number of tax filers is hardly one percent. In fact, every earning citizen should pay the tax as per his/her income. For example, if the tax is fixed as one percent of the monthly income, then those who earn Rs 100,000 per month will pay a monthly tax of Rs 1,000 and persons earning Rs 40,000 per month will pay Rs 400 as monthly tax. It is important to tax all earning citizens of the country so that they realize that to enjoy various services like roads, electricity, gas and water, and transport they need to pay taxes to finance the construction of infrastructure for these services by the government. In view of the above discussion, to increase the economic growth, foreign investment, exports and foreign exchange earnings, while it is necessary for the government to work on the above discussed sectors of Pakistan’s economy on priority, our embassies and diplomatic missions abroad should also be tasked to engage in the economic diplomacy to attract foreign investment, create export avenues for our goods and also create demand in other countries for employing our trained manpower. The writer is a former Research Fellow of Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Islamabad Published in Daily Times, December 5th 2018.