In a quickly improving economic friendly environment, Pakistan's economy can progress in a short span of time, if it is made technology-intensive
For the wellbeing of its people, to achieve prosperity and become an influential country, it is necessary that Pakistan attains economic self-sufficiency by hastening its economic development. In this area, it has the capacity to succeed within a short timeframe, provided that it makes its economy technology-intensive on an urgent basis. In the past, like most other Asian economies, Pakistan’s economy had been based on making use of physical capital and cheap labour, with less emphasis on modern technology. While many western and some Asian economies use the most modern innovations and technology, especially information, communications and computer technologies (ICT), to achieve spectacular economic growth rates and export earnings, Pakistan has been slow in adopting these technologies. For example, with a much lesser population than Pakistan, Finland and Singapore’s annual exports for the year 2012 were $ 182 billion and $ 360 billion respectively, while Pakistan’s annual export earnings were only $ 18 billion.
China is the best example of a country with a large population that has revolutionised its economy by using scientific and ICT innovations. As a consequence, China has achieved and maintained an annual GDP growth rate of between 8 to 10 percent and, during the last two decades, its annual exports had swelled to $ 2.05 trillion. These examples show that to achieve sustainable high economic growth and to earn more foreign exchange by exporting a large variety and volume of internationally competitive products, Pakistan’s economy will have to be made technology-intensive on a priority basis.
It is already recognised by the world that Pakistan’s economy is resilient and has a great potential to progress. In the past, like the other thriving economies of Asia, Pakistan’s economy also achieved high growth rates. For instance, in the 1960s and 1980s, Pakistan had achieved annual GDP growth rates of 6.8 and 6.5 percent respectively and from 2005 to 2008, its growth rate went up to 9 percent, just like China and India. The current government of Pakistan is also taking lots of interest in the country’s economic progress. The government has worked hard to pull Pakistan’s economy out of the low growth cycle prevailing for the last seven years due to huge economic and foreign investment losses because of the war on terror. The government has considerably reduced the interest rate, budget deficit and inflation and the economic growth rate has been enhanced to 4.2 percent, which is likely to rise further.
In the light of the current successes of the army in the war on terror and the resultant improvement in Pakistan’s security situation, foreign investment has started pouring in. China’s large investment plans for constructing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an example, which is likely to be followed by other rich countries. Hence, in a quickly improving economic friendly environment, Pakistan’s economy can progress in a short span of time, if it is made technology-intensive. In this context and having a huge and vibrant population — with a large number of qualified engineers, education experts, scientists, ICT experts and economists, an experienced class of industrialists, agriculturists, administrators and thinkers and robust national institutions — it should not be difficult for Pakistan to achieve this objective by formulating and implementing a workable strategy. In this regard, it is also encouraging to note that the government is prioritising the country’s economic development based on Pakistan Vision 2025, which also aims to make the economy more technologically-intensive.
To achieve this goal, Pakistan could start by laying emphasis on some important sectors of the economy. The government should provide incentives to the industrialists to establish their own research and development departments, increase awareness, induct modern technologies and make their products value added with attractive packaging, etc. In the agriculture sector, an immediate requirement is to help farmers and marketing intermediaries by providing them technology for the proper grading and packing of exportable products. To enhance employment, the government should expand and encourage small industries in the rural areas. In this regard, providing incentives and loans, with proper guidance, to manufacturers will be very useful. Another important area is the training of a young labour force for different jobs, in properly organised vocational institutes with modern technologies. The government should also establish ICT training centres in the rural areas to train young people in the use of computers, with a particular emphasis on computer programming. To conclude, there is no way out of Pakistan’s economic crisis, other than making its economy more knowledge based. The government should accord high priority to this undertaking, for which the aforementioned suggestions would further strengthen development.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Muhammad Hanif
Quelle/Source: Daily Times, 28.06.2015
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