KARACHI: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said the day is not far off when the country will join the ranks of developed nations because his government is striving hard to end terrorism and using available resources to resolve the energy crisis and revive economy.

Addressing a gathering after laying the foundation stone of the first phase of M-9 Motorway between Karachi and Hyderabad on Wed­nesday, the prime minister said Pakistan was facing three major challenges — terrorism, energy crisis and revival of economy.

Mr Sharif said the government was laying a network of motorways across the country which would reduce the distance between people and increase interaction and commercial activities among the provinces.

He said eradicating terrorism was his government’s priority. Armed forces were engaged in the Zarb-i-Azb Operation against terrorists and confronting them boldly. “We appreciate their services and Pakistan would get rid of terrorism soon.”

The prime minister said 10,000MW of electricity would be added to the system by 2017 and 3,000MW would be acquired from China and LNG would yield another 3,600MW. Besides, electricity would be acquired from the Thar coal power project which would be completed soon with indigenous coal resources.

He said the government was paying special attention to education, health and social welfare projects and had doubled the education budget from 2 per cent to 4pc, which would increase employment opportunities and play a role in eliminating poverty.

Mr Sharif said Pakistan had started building the motorway in 1991, but after the removal of his government in 1999 work on ongoing projects was stopped and as a result “we are standing where we have started 20 years ago, while other countries, which had initiated the projects at the same time, had left us far behind”. “We ourselves have created obstacles in the progress of our country. Now we have to learn from our mistakes because we could not make progress without reforming ourselves.”

The prime minister said the population of Pakistan was about 180 million with a large number of skilled youths playing an important role in developing other countries. “We have to take advantage of the capability of our youths by providing them employment.”

Published in Dawn March 12th , 2015

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