LAHORE: Minister of State and Privatisation Commission chairman Mohammad Zubair says the ongoing political turmoil has started taking its toll on the country’s economy.

“We may either miss or have to delay certain economic targets due to sit-ins,” said Mr Zubair at the Asian Leadership and HRM Summit ‘Pushing leadership and growth through strategy’ at a hotel on The Mall on Thursday.

There was a lack of confidence among businessmen to invest in Pakistan and even domestic investors were preferring countries like Bangladesh. “The PML-N government restored their confidence and investments started coming. We had a success story till May (this year) but afterwards I am at loss to present Pakistan’s case to the international community,” said the minister.

Although protests and sit-ins was the democratic right of the opposition, he said the method adopted both by the PTI and PAT was not in favour of Pakistan.

He said that problems could be resolved through dialogues as agitation and fighting was not the ultimate solution.

“Everyone criticize situation in Pakistan but no one come up with any solution. The government is going through a critical time but the matter can only be settled through dialogue.

Moody’s turns Pakistan assessment as positive after Pakistan’s successful talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is a negative propaganda that the civil disobedience call has pushed away the IMF,” said the minister.

Admitting that there had been brain drain in Pakistan, he said still many best minds were working in the country. “In terms of human capital, Pakistan is blessed with finest resources. Pakistanis are considered the best and top quality professionals the world over. Every top position in Pakistan is being held by top brains having gotten outstanding education,” said the minister.

Other noted national and international speakers at the summit included Anjali Raina (Harvard Business School), Vinay Hebbar (Harvard Business Publishing), Prof Dr Sohail H. Naqvi (LUMS), Avinash Vashistha (Accenture India and NASSCOM), Ahsen Javed (ORACLE), Khuram Rahat (Teradata), Syed Tariq Husain (Emirates Investment Group UAE), Dr Tarita Shankar (Indira Group of Institute), Guenter Zwickl (Siemens), Irfan Siddiqui (Meezan Bank), Syed Mazhar Hussain (PTCL), Ishan Raina (Ignitee Digital), Irfan Wahab Khan (Telenor), Adnan Siddiqui (Growth Initiatives Leader, IBM Middle East, Africa and Turkey), Salim Ghauri (Netsol and P@SHA), Badar Khushnood (Google), Ayub Siddiqui (Sanofi), Adil Khattak (Attock Refinery), Shafique Uqaili (Allied Bank), Akram Durrani (Dawood Hercules), Sheraz Karim (SNL Financial), Waqar Khadim (Sefam), Farhad Karamally (Funverks Global and Navitus Sri Lanka), Dr Sitwat Hussain (Descon Engineering), Haroon Waheed (Fatima Group), Akkasha Sultan (ORACLE ASEAN), Max Babri (The Konsultants), Al-karim Hasan (AntiClock) and Shakeel Mapara (Sanofi).

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014