ISLAMABAD, Dec 27: Governor State Bank Dr Ishrat Hussain said here on Friday Pakistan could achieve progress, prosperity and economic growth only through human resource development and promotion of technological education.

“There must be a strong emphasis on the promotion of higher and technological education to develop human resources,” he added.

Delivering a lecture on “Pakistan’s economy and its historical and future perspective”, organised by the Society of Pakistan’s Economists, he pointed out that higher education was critical to the country’s development.

He said the benefit of government allocations for development should reach the downtrodden and the poor.

Dr Ishrat Hussain also stressed the need for the economic empowerment of communities at the grass-roots level for poverty alleviation.

The development projects at the grass-roots level should be initiated according to the requirements and needs of the people in the area, he said. “If the requirement of the people in a particular area is a school, then a dispensary should not be built.”

He said the consent of the people before launching a development project should be sought. “This would benefit them greatly”.

The central bank governor also said that transparent polices were pursued during the last three years of the Musharraf government. “Due to transparent policies, the economy has stabilized, and is showing positive signs”.

There are only a few countries which have achieved 6 per cent GDP growth over four decades and Pakistan is one of them, he noted. “Poverty has shrunk from 35 per cent in 1987-88 to 20 per cent now. We were importing all of our food, and now, with 140 million people, we are self-sufficient. We also doubled the livestock production, which is no less a revolution,” he added.

He said that during the last ten years, Rs1.2 trillion were spent on development and, “all this money was eaten away by the government corporations.”