Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday raised the maximum loan limit under the Prime Minister’s Youth Business and Agriculture Loan Scheme from Rs7.5 million to Rs25 million, reduced the minimum eligibility age from 21 to 18 years and directed that 30% of loans be reserved for women to promote youth entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. Chairing a review meeting on the scheme, he directed the relevant authorities to facilitate young people in establishing businesses and undertaking agricultural activities by providing them with financial assistance, professional guidance and technical support.
The revamping of the scheme assumes greater significance in the backdrop of rising rate of unemployment because of sluggish economic activity as well as down-sizing of the Government ministries, divisions and departments. Official national unemployment hovers around 5% to 8% but experts say this figure hides widespread underemployment. Among youth, constituting 58 to 64% of the population, the rate of unemployment is 10 to 12.5% and this creates large-scale frustration among this segment of the society. An increase in home remittances by overseas Pakistanis notwithstanding, large-scale brain-drain reflects poorly on our ability to utilize talent and skills of our youth for the good of the country. Female participation and employment rates lag severely behind males, with urban-rural and regional divides and the problem being acute in areas like Balochistan. It is also a reality that a massive portion of the labour force works in low-wage, unprotected informal or seasonal agricultural jobs and repeated cuts and resultant squeeze of the public sector development programme has compounded the situation further. Jobs are scarce not just due to temporary downturns, but because the economic base (low industrial growth and agricultural mechanization) fails to absorb the millions of new graduates entering the labour market every year. Therefore, the programme of the Prime Minister seems to be a genuine effort aimed at promoting self-employment and empowering women. A handsome increase in the ceiling of the loans and reduction in the age limit will surely encourage more people to benefit from the scheme, earn respectable livelihood and contribute their share to the national economy. The PM has done well by issuing directions to the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) to extend all possible assistance to young applicants, including support for business start-ups, guidance, business consultancy and technical services. Successful ventures will not only improve the socio-economic conditions of millions of families but also ensure the loans are timely repaid. The initiative of the PM is aimed at shifting young people away from traditional job-seeking toward self-employment and entrepreneurship. There are already indications that the scheme has made a measurable socio-economic impact in the country as approximately 581,341 young people have received loans totaling Rs. 313.9 billion since January 2023, marking a substantial increase compared to prior years. For the ongoing fiscal year 2026–27, an additional Rs. 292 billion has been allocated to reach an estimated 266,700 more recipients. Impact studies show that the scheme has helped increase household incomes, improve living standards, boost savings and enable asset acquisition or better access to health and education. However, mere launching of a loan scheme is not enough to address the kind of economic challenges faced by the country and its people. The public sector must focus on creating a stable economic foundation and modernizing education, while the private sector needs to shift toward value-added industries and inclusive workplace models. The Government should shift the national education framework away from rote memorization and toward practical, market-driven disciplines. Integrating Data Science, AI and digital literacy into higher education will help address the deep structural skills mismatch. The Government should also provide targeted tax breaks, subsidized energy rates and credit facilities to export-oriented industries (such as software development, value-added textiles and green tech) that inherently demand a large, diverse workforce. The industry should allocate dedicated budgets for retraining and up-skilling existing staff and focusing on emerging technologies and management methodologies to keep the manpower globally competitive.
