SWABI: Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has said that the federal government is encouraging the academia to put forward their valuable proposals to strengthen the economy and boost the industrial sector.

He stated this while speaking at the inaugural session of a three-day national optics convention at the GIK Institute, organised by Society for Photo-Optical and Instrumentation Engineer (SPIE), and inaugurating the institute’s central mess here on Saturday.

Mr Iqbal said the government, industrialists and academia needed to put their heads together to devise result- oriented policies to help turn the economy around.

“We look forward to academia to guide us,” he said.

“The academia is part of our planning and policy to achieve the objective of economic growth.” The federal minister said that economic growth target could be achieved if all the sectors of the economy functioned well.

He asked the economists that their research should be according to the requirements of the country to bring about industrial revolution.

The minister said that the present age was not the age of muscle power, rather the power of knowledge-based economy mattered.

He said that political stability was a prerequisite for economic prosperity.

The former Soviet Union was a super power by the dint of its military muscle, but when its economy collapsed it disintegrated, he maintained.

He said that economic progress required economic vision, investment and input of professionals.

Mr Iqbal also stressed the need for quality education for economic progress and political stability.

He said that the federal government was striving to work out a plan to boost cooperation with the province to improve literacy rate.

He also felt the need for reforming the education sector to encourage creativity.

The curriculum is needed to be redesigned to produce leaders, he maintained.

The federal minister said that the PML-N-led government was committed to increasing the education budget to four per cent of the GDP within five years.

The minister said that the youth should be agents of change and ambassadors of the country.

He said that the government had adopted short, medium and long-term measures to tackle the power crisis, including plugging the wastage of electricity.

Shakeel Durrani, executive director of Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SOPREST), Jehangir Bashar, Rector GIK Institute, Professor Fazal Ahmad Khalid, Pro-Rector (academic), Ahsan Basir Sheikh, Pro-Rector (admin and finance), faculty deans and academic staff also graced the occasion.