Education drives national prosperity

Pakistan spends less than 2% of GDP on education.

KARACHI: Education has a direct link with a country’s prosperity. Despite the fact that we have the world’s sixth largest population we have not yet been able to truly leverage this huge God given asset to our advantage mainly due to widespread illiteracy.

All countries larger than us in terms of population (China, India, US, Indonesia and Brazil) have made excellent use of this resource to drive economic growth, improve standard of living and fix fundamentals of their society. This was achieved mainly behind their achieving high literacy rates; a key indicator reflecting a country’s ability to create value. Except for India whose literacy is at 75%, all others have literacy ranging from 90% to 98%. Pakistan is below 50%.

No administration has been able to fix this fundamental flaw in our demographics which is now the very reason why we are in such dire straits. On average, Pakistan government spends less than 2% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on education.

96% of nations spend more per person on education than Pakistan which spends a paltry $18/person. Countries like India spend three times our rate, Morocco ten times, Malaysia forty times, Singapore eighty times and developed nations like UK, Frances, USA, and Belgium more than a hundred times.

To see how education can transform a country, let’s take Singapore as a case in point. Singapore obtained its independence 18 years after us, has no natural resources, has a mere 3% of Pakistan’s population but has a GDP size in nominal terms roughly 20% higher than Pakistan and a literacy rate of 96%.

Singapore with a population less than the city of Lahore, is amazingly generating GDP significantly higher than that of Pakistan. Shocking isn’t it.

It all stems from the innate power of education. Education drives progress. Education drives intellectual capacity building, which drives ability to know right from wrong which in turn drives overall governance of a country. Education enhances the ability to think and decide which in turns gives the masses the ability to vote in qualified people. Education drives innovation, values, ability to see the future and solution based thinking, which in turn drives economic growth.

In a recent study it was proven that a 20-30% increase in literacy produces 8-16% gain in GDP. Teaching mothers to read can lead to a decrease in infant mortality of up to 50%.

Unless the government and the people in power realise the true benefit of education and its impact on productivity and economic growth, we will continue to dwell among the illiterate and chaotic nations of the world.

The writer works in the corporate sector and is active on various business forums and trade bodies.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2012.