Conference on Pakistan’s global profile held at IPRI

Islamabad

Dr Safdar A Sohail, Executive Director, CPEC Centre of Excellence, Planning Commission, has said that keeping financial details of Pak-China Economic Corridor secret does not compromise transparency as this is a practice the world over,

Dr Sohail was answering a question of former foreign secretary, Inamul Haq, at a one-day conference on ‘Pakistan’s global profile: priorities and options’ organised by Islamabad Policy Research Institute here Thursday.

Dr Sohail said that all details about establishing infrastructure are available but economic details cannot be made public. He also did not agree with Inam-ul-Haq that Punjab government’s agreement with China regarding CPEC can be shared as it is not a private transaction.

Earlier, in his presentation, Dr Sohail said that many of the structural bottlenecks faced by Pakistan such as low FDI in manufacturing; poor investment climate, low tax to GDP ratio, the $187 billion infrastructure deficit and even poor agricultural performance will be addressed through CPEC.

Former Ambassador Tariq Osman Hyder said that size of Pakistani Diaspora is large enough to become a socio-political constituency in itself for the overall development of Pakistan. He said that it is critical to protect the rights of all those who belong to our diaspora.

Inam-ul-Haq in his presidential remarks said that on the indexes of refugees, internally displaced persons, terrorism, number of people desiring to flee the country and religious intolerance, Pakistan’s ranking is very bad in the comity of nations, which makes our image bad in other countries.

Rahim Hayat Qureshi, Director General, Policy Planning and Public Diplomacy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that his ministry has recognised that cultural diplomacy programmes create forums for interaction between people of different countries, thus, laying the groundwork for the forging of friendships and strong ‘foundations of trust’ between people of different nationalities. He said that the ministry has been expanding its public diplomacy initiatives keeping in mind the lessons learnt over the last two years, with more focus on social and electronic media and economic diplomacy initiatives to redesign the soft image of Pakistan.

Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmad, Director, School of Politics and IR, Quaid-i-Azam University, said that media is a very strong tool in persuasion of public diplomacy. Internet and social media are significant mediums in increasing the regional and global profile of a country. Healthy news talk shows, dramas and films can counter misunderstandings, ignorance, and baseless hatred that people in other countries bear towards us, he said. Highlighting that PTV has no role, he called for public-private partnership to improve our image abroad.

Ambassador (r) Sohail Amin, President, IPRI, in his opening remarks said that Pakistan has the 7th largest diaspora and the 9th largest labour force in the world. “With the phenomenon of extended life expectancy, the aging populations in the industrialised world have increased. Pakistan’s existing young population can play a major role by contributing towards the growing global workforce demands,” he added.