Overview of progress: Minister advocates export-led growth

Emphasises the significance of resource mobilisation

ISLAMABAD: A key cabinet member of Nawaz Sharif has questioned the economic growth pattern during three military dictatorships and emphasized on endogenous factors of growth.

“It is the right time to shift focus from exogenous factors to internal drivers of growth,” Planning, Development and Reform Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal said. He emphasised the significance of resource mobilisation, investment and exports.

He was of the view that economic growth during the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s was unsustainable as it was fundamentally based on exogenous factors.

In his key-note speech at the inaugural session of a three-day conference on “Vision-2025: Effective strategies for transformational growth” and annual general meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists (PSDE) here on Thursday, Iqbal elaborated that during those eras the country was used as a geostrategic theatre.

“There was free flow of billions of dollars due to Cold War-era foreign aid, and remittances during those decades,” Iqbal said, adding on the other hand every time a democratic government took charge, they had to work under economic sanctions.

The minister said that the growth patterns of the past were non-participatory, which led to regional disparity and social inequality in the country, that resulted in a heavy cost in terms of its physical dismemberment.

He said that country needed an average 7-8 per cent growth rate in the next ten years to create job opportunities for the growing population of youth.

“We need to maximise growth through productivity gains, which is critical to attain competitive edge in the world, and vision-2025 envisages a competitive and knowledge-based economy,” Iqbal said

The minister particularly laid emphasis on human resource development and informed that the government was investing heavily in education and health.

Iqbal also spoke on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which, he said, was a game-changer.

The minister asked opponents not to politicize it because it would benefit all the provinces and regions of the country.

The minister said that the inauguration of Diamer-Bhasha Dam would take place next year.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th,  2015.