Our Covid response

In the midst of every crisis lies a great opportunity. The incumbent government, led by Prime Minister Imran Khan, proved it’s not just a cliché. Yes, such has been our fight against Covid-19. We not only rode past the first wave of the coronavirus much less scathed – in comparison with the neighbouring India as well as the US and Europe – but we also came out with a bagful of takeaways in terms of healthcare service delivery, economic management and social security mechanism. Let’s have a look at these progresses one by one.

Our medical response to Covid-19 has resulted in improved and expanded healthcare facilities in the country. Our hospitals are now better equipped than they were in the pre-Covid days, and our healthcare professionals too are now better placed to deal with mass emergencies. The fight against the lethal virus has led us to arrange for manufacturing face masks, sanitisers and ventilators at home instead of importing them in big numbers to meet the local demand. Not just that, we are exporting these medical items too, according to Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry. Moreover, our social safety net was also put to test and came through. An amount of Rs144 billion was doled out to as many as 120 million people under the Ehsaas Cash Programme to smoothen the lockdown fallout.

Takeaways on the economic front are quite significant. There has been an unusual rise in remittances from abroad for the last four months – thanks, in part, to the Roshan Digital Account scheme launched by the SBP for overseas Pakistanis on September 10. This has led to the country’s current account witnessing a record surplus of $792 million in the first quarter of the current fiscal year; and this has been the first quarterly surplus in five years. Stimulus packages offered by the central bank spurred the commercial activity in the country, also reflected in a notable rise in exports. It is due to the rising inflows from abroad that the dollar fell below 160 against the rupee for the first time in six months.

No wonder our overall Covid response has been praised by global institutions like the World Health Organization, and our PM invited to share his experience at the prestigious World Economic Forum.

 

 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2020.

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