Call to address challenges to reset economy

LAHORE:The Burki Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) Friday launched its report “State of the Economy, Frontline Stakeholders, Reaping the Gender Dividend” at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

President of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry Kashif Anwar, Chief Secretary Punjab Abdullah Khan Sumbal, Chairman Higher Education Commission Professor Dr Shahid Muneer, Chairman Burki Institute of Public Policy Dr Shahid Javed Burki, Vice-Chairman Dr Shahid Najam, Secretary Women Development Department Sumaira Samad, Syed Yawar Ali, Chairperson Bunyad Foundation Shahida Shaheen Ateeq-ur-Rehman, Dr Farrukh Iqbal and LCCI former Vice-President Zeeshan Khalil spoke on the occasion.

All the speakers spelled out the critical economic challenges that needed to be addressed to achieve the desired pace of economic growth. The major thrust of the report was to suggest policies to reset the economy to its long-term potential growth path and inextricable nexus between all the stakeholders of the economy.

Abdullah Khan Sumbal said it is unfortunate that there is a lot of lip service in this particular area which we call women empowerment despite efforts to increase women's role in different walks of life. Still, we need to enhance women’s role particularly in economic governance. There are two areas where there is a need to work more practically. One is population planning and the second is gender parity. These two areas are very much under-achieved. State has a very important role to play in development. Bureaucracy cannot go alone without the help of other stakeholders.

Shahid Najam said that the situation needs collective resolve to continue to work for gender parity. He said according to Global Gender Gap on gender parity Pakistan is only above Afghanistan which is very unfortunate. This issue wants us to refocus on how we are handling the gender issue. He said that the kind of potential we have in terms of a diverse young population and we are squandering it away when there is a lot of talk going on about gender sensitive issues on every forum.

Dr Farrukh Iqbal, who gave the presentation regarding the state of economy by outlining that this is the third time since 2008 that we have foreign reserves as low as two months of imports. He pointed out that we are facing the same situation repeatedly because of two factors - one is political and second is economic.

LCCI President Kashif Anwar said that the trade Deficit in 2021-22 stood in excess of US$48 billion. In the first five months of the current financial year (July- Nov), the trade deficit stood at US$14.27 billion with imports ranging around 26.2billion dollars and exports merely around 11.9 billion dollars.

He said that the inflation rate has consistently remained above 20% since June 2022. The main reasons for the increase in inflation are exchange rate depreciation, over reliance on imported commodities/raw materials/machinery/Oil and the increase in electricity tariff. He added that massive devaluation has taken place in recent times as the interbank dollar rate has crossed Rs226.