Comprehensive growth strategy soon

Benefits of policies should reach the whole society particularly the poor.


January 28, 2011

ISLAMABAD: The government plans to formulate a comprehensive economic growth strategy soon to benefit people across the country said Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh while addressing the participants of a growth policy seminar which was jointly organised by the Planning Commission and Department for International Development (DFID-UK) here on Thursday.

He said that new growth strategy would help improve competitiveness, promote investment based on innovation and entrepreneurship and exploit the potential of the country’s large domestic market.

Shaikh hoped that during the current fiscal year exports will cross US $22 billion and called for adopting long term result oriented policies for economic growth and prosperity whose benefit reach all segments of the society particularly poor

The government is facilitating the private sector an engine of economic growth and that it is not the job of the government to do business but make policies and regulations which promote business, said  Shaikh. He added that the government has initiated prudent economic policies for the prosperity of the country.

In his lecture Professor Alan Winters, one of the UK Government’s chief economists, stressed the need for the inextricable link between economic growth and poverty reduction. He said that economic growth and poverty reduction go hand-in-hand, getting more people in the jobs will lift them out of poverty and create more consumers driving more production and demand

He added that as more people increase tax returns allowing the government to improve living standards of people by investing in schools, hospitals and other infrastructure projects.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28th,  2011.

COMMENTS (4)

Meekal Ahmed | 13 years ago | Reply I am concerned about this comprehensive growth strategy. What is this thing? Another ruse? Coming from the Planning Commission, I know its principal "author". I was sent a slide-show on it and my heart sank. I sent it to other economist friends and their remarks/comments were mostly un-printable. We don't need new comprehensive growth strategies. We need to fix many things but we could start with the budget -- the root cause of macro-instability every time, the world over. That's where it all starts. Even if you can only make incremental improvements in the budget each year because of the powerful forces of resistance, good things will eventually follow -- growth, jobs, lower inflation, interest rates, debt and lower poverty. We can't even do the simplest of things without making an awful hash of it. We couldn't even import rental power plants that work. And we are going to come up with a "new" comprehensive growth strategy?
ajklodhi | 13 years ago | Reply Academies must be given a role for the enhancement of the quality of education.These are already playing their role in imparting the quality education as compared to the conventional public as well as private schools colleges and universities.
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