ISLAMABAD, June 10: The government needs to evolve a comprehensive plan aimed at facilitating the private sector to contain poverty and unemployment.

Informed sources told Dawn that during the National Security Council (NSC) meeting, presided over by President General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday, issues concerning poverty and unemployment were discussed at length, and participants observed that more needed to be done to attract sizable investment.

It was felt that without huge local and foreign investment, it would be difficult to put a real dent on poverty and create new job opportunities.

The NSC meeting, the sources said, praised the performance of the government of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz particularly in achieving 8.4 per cent GDP growth rate.

The government admitted that poverty was still 32.1 per cent while rate of unemployment was not less than 9 per cent.

Independent experts believed that poverty has not reduced over the years and that unemployment was becoming a matter of serious concern for everybody.

“Without extending one-window facility for infrastructure such as water, electricity, gas, etc., for the private sector, it would be difficult to achieve industrialization in the country,” a source said.

He particularly referred to overseas Pakistanis who always complained for poor infrastructure facilities that often forced them to leave the country without making any investment.

Various government’s new official documents maintained that the private sector faced challenges to improve its competitiveness in domestic as well as in the foreign markets.

“To improve competitiveness in the manufacturing and services sector, the private sector would have to enhance its productivity through the induction of modern and efficient technologies and improved management practices,” said the Medium Term Development Framework 2005-10.

It believed that the large PSDP spending on education and skill development, infrastructure and provision of support services would help enhance the efficiency and productivity of both private and public sectors.

At the same time, the higher level of investment in agriculture in the form of human resource development, research and development (R&D), improved water availability through improved lining of canals and water courses, support services, infrastructure development and supporting policies would significantly contribute in raising the factor productivity of agriculture sector.

The private sector dynamism and the government resolve to play the role of a facilitator by providing a conducive, knowledge-based and supportive environment would greatly help achieve the investment and growth targets in the medium term, the medium term framework said.