Tap semiconductor sector, says Tarar

Calls for joint efforts to harness youth’s potential, drive economic advancement

ISLAMABAD:

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar on Thursday stressed enhanced collaboration between the public and private sectors to accelerate the country’s economic development. Speaking at the First Pakistan Semiconductor Summit, he highlighted the establishment of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) to attract investment and ensure ‘ease of doing business’. The minister underscored the government’s main policy thrust of encouraging innovation and investment.

He noted that Pakistan, as the world’s fifth-largest democracy, boasted abundant natural resources, with its human resource being the most significant. “We are blessed with a huge youth population, constituting 68% of our total,” he added, emphasising the enormous potential this demographic represents. Tarar pointed out Pakistan’s strategic location at the crossroads of the world, a source of national pride, and reiterated the government’s encouragement of innovation and investment, as demonstrated by the summit’s focus on public-private collaboration.

The minister mentioned the recent approval by the federal cabinet of a public-private partnership policy framework to facilitate investment in the country. He said that the government’s role extended beyond regulation to actively facilitating investment, lamenting that governments sometimes neglected this primary responsibility, hampering investment.

Tarar highlighted Pakistan’s production of 50,000 engineering graduates annually and its leading engineering universities globally. However, he expressed regret that Pakistan had not fully benefited from the semiconductor industry, valued at $550 billion and projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030. He affirmed Pakistan’s potential to leverage its human resources in this industry.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2024.

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