Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Wednesday said Pakistan was in dire need of a ‘decade of political stability’ to turnaround the national economy and achieve the consistent growth trajectory.
“There is a big opportunity for us to streamline the internal system, ensure political stability in the country and create a decade of stability as economic policies do prove result-oriented before ten years,” he said while addressing an international conference here.
The conference titled “Developments in the Middle East: Lessons and Opportunities for Pakistan” was organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI).
During 2013-18, the minister recalled that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had effectively tackled the confronted issues of load-shedding, terrorism, security and economy besides bringing around $ 29 billion investment under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects.
“But unfortunately the development-journey was punctured in 2018 general elections in the shape of artificial change,” he added.
Seeing the unprecedented national development during the PML-N last tenure, Ahsan Iqbal said the Price waterhouse Coopers (PwC), an international ranking company, had predicted that Pakistan would be standing among the top 20 economies of the world by 2030.
He was of the view that all stakeholders, remaining within their domains, should think how they could align themselves with the common vision of Pakistan to move forward towards the development and prosperity, adopting the ‘collaborative and harmonized mode.’
The minister said there was a great scope for Pakistani to increase cooperation with Middle Eastern countries and get investment, technologies and expertise in diverse fields like agriculture, livestock, information technology, human resource development and mining, which would be beneficial for increasing the country exports.—APP
