THE Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led federal government is formulating a five-year plan 2013-18 to put the ailing economy on a fast growth track.

Briefing the media persons last week, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said the plan is to be finalised by December this year.

The plan will focus on seven thematic areas: energy for all, value addition in productive sector, developing modern infrastructure, initiating institutional and governance reforms for efficient delivery, building social capital, making private sector the driver of growth, and evolving new strategy for self-reliance and high sustainable growth.

The minister said the government is also preparing a long-term perspective plan ‘Pakistan 2025’ in order to join the fast growing countries of the region. The government’s vision of this economic planning is to make Pakistan a developed country by 2047.

Perspective development planning plays a crucial role in giving strategic direction to a country’s socio-economic development. Pakistan New Growth Framework 2011 advocated a paradigm shift strategy where PSDP was skewed towards brick and mortar projects, instead of focus on ‘software’ to boost productivity and efficiency of existing production assets.

Centralised planning this time has to be different. The new plan needs to guide and encourage the private sector with a new set of policy directions. If private sector has to serve as the engine of economic growth, it has to improve its productivity, efficiency and competence. It means centralised planning for the market in which the state is to be an enabler and facilitator.

While increased public sector investment may be necessary for the initial years of the plan to generate businesses for private sector, the transition period has to be short and quick.

The markets have to be developed to channel the savings into productive sectors, improve the quality of investments, mobilise resources and adopt innovative and creativity ways to improve efficiency in the economy. Competitiveness has to be a major pillar of national economic growth.

Currently economic progress is constrained by various factors. The latest Global Competitiveness Report 2012-13 while depicting the state of Pakistan’s economy says the country stood at 124th position out of 144 countries in terms of its overall competitiveness score.

On indicators irregular payments and bribes, favouritism in government decision-making, wastefulness of government spending, business costs of terrorism, of crimes and violence, the country has been ranked among the worst. On the index of business costs of terrorism, Pakistan scored the 143rd position, compared to 119th position in 2010.

Given the current picture of the economy, the Planning Commission of Pakistan will have to come up with something very different this time around.

The most important challenge to tackle would be to propose some innovative measures to attract investment and private sector development so that their stepped up activities ensure successful implementation of the plan.

While social service delivery such as provision of education, healthcare and basic services are devolved to the provinces, the role of federal government is to give policy guidelines. Here, it is important to have all the federating units on board to work and make the proposed national medium term plan a success.

At the moment, different political parties are running the federal and provincial governments, each having a separate political agenda and set of priorities. It is to be seen how the forthcoming five-year-plan offers a harmonised approach of interventions that, at the end of the day, will achieve the overall national goals.