ISLAMABAD, May 10: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Wednesday that poverty had declined from 32.1 per cent to 25.4 per cent and the per capita income was expected to reach $800 by the end of June this year.
“Compared with 1999-2000, all social and economic indicators are showing positive trend and we are doing fairly well in attaining the Millennium Development Goals,” he said while inaugurating a two-day Pakistan Development Forum (PDF).
“Never before have we seen such a massive pace of development in the country as it is happening today. Our endeavours are now focused on harnessing the benefits of this economic success into a meaningful gain for all segments of our society and massive social uplift,” he emphasised.
He said that gross primary enrolment had increased to 86 per cent, immunisation of children gone up to 83 per cent and the water supply coverage expanded to 39 per cent.
The prime minister listed a number of challenges that needed to be taken into account seriously, including setting up of more schools, providing more and more people with access to clean drinking water, ensuring better sanitation and health services, treating women as equal partner in all spheres of life, etc.
He said: “The sobering array of challenges that confront us are: to sustain acceleration in growth within a band of 6 to 8 per cent over 5 to 10 years, supply of assured and reasonably priced energy, adequate water resources and their distribution management, food security, bridging the skill gap, higher productivity and job creation.”
Mr Aziz said the government had been making efforts to secure economic stability, strengthen democratic institutions, empower the vulnerable segments of society, stem extremism and ensure better standards of living for people to realise the Quaid-i-Azam’s vision of Pakistan as a prosperous, moderate and democratic Islamic state.
He pointed out that the Pakistan Development Forum, previously known as Aid-to-Pakistan Consortium, had provided an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences on best practices.
Talking about the theme of this year’s forum ‘Drivers of growth: unleashing the potential of the private sector,’ the prime minister said Pakistan had crossed that bridge when the economy was fragile, the balance of payments was vulnerable to external shocks, the country’s debt situation had worsened and foreign exchange reserves were not sufficient to finance even few weeks of imports.
“We had almost lost our financial sovereignty and international rating agencies had downgraded Pakistan to a selective default level”.
The present government worked hard to implement deep and wide ranging reforms and to achieve national renewal, he said, adding: “Our unwavering resolve to reform is manifested in ‘poverty reduction strategy paper,’ ‘medium term development framework’ and ‘vision for 2030 — moving towards knowledge-based economy’.”
Mr Aziz recalled that last year Pakistan faced one of the worst disasters of its history when the Oct 8 earthquake wreaked widespread devastation and enormous loss of life.
