Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Friday said Pakistan’s central economic challenge was to convert macroeconomic stability into sustained growth, higher productivity, exports, investment and employment.
He expressed these views while addressing a visiting delegation of Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA students, a news release said.
Welcoming the delegation to the Ministry of Planning and Development, the minister said Pakistan should not be viewed merely through the prism of its challenges, but through the scale of its underlying potential.
With a population of nearly 260 million, a large youth cohort, a strategic geographic location, considerable agricultural and mineral resources, an expanding digital economy and a strong global diaspora, he said the country possessed significant foundations for long-term economic progress.
He said Pakistan must break the recurring cycle of “boom, external account pressure, stabilization and slowdown” by restructuring the economy around productivity and exports.
“Stabilization is necessary, but stabilization alone is not development. Pakistan cannot austerity its way to prosperity. We have to earn our prosperity through productivity, innovation, investment and exports,” Ahsan Iqbal said.
The minister briefed the delegation on URAAN Pakistan, the government’s national transformation framework built around the 5Es: Exports, Enterprise and Employment; E-Pakistan and the digital economy; Environment, Climate Change, Food and Water Security; Energy and Infrastructure; and Equity, Ethics and Empowerment.
He said Pakistan had set the ambition of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2035, but stressed that the objective was not simply to achieve a numerical GDP target.
“The real question is what Pakistan will be capable of producing and selling competitively to the world in 2035 that it cannot produce today. Development is ultimately about building national capabilities,” he said.
Ahsan Iqbal identified productivity, quality and innovation as critical determinants of Pakistan’s future competitiveness. He said the government was seeking to build a national culture around Productivity, Quality and Innovation (PQI) so that “Made in Pakistan” increasingly became associated globally with reliability, quality and value.
