Pakistan must adopt right policies to maximise CPEC benefits: Dr Shamshad

ISLAMABAD: United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (UNESCAP) executive director Dr Shamshad Akhtar said on Thursday that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was the flagship programme among all six corridors launched by the Chinese leadership for connecting different regions  under One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative.

Pakistan should create synergies to exploit the potential of CPEC. “The world is competitive and there is need to adopt the right kind of policies to maximise benefits for Pakistan under the CPEC initiative,” Dr Akhtar said. She was addressing a session during Pakistan Development Summit and Expo organised by Ministry of Planning on Thursday at the Pak-China Friendship Centre.

Dr Akhtar, who was also former governor, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), said the country’s boom and bust cycles in the past showed that the country lacked coordinated and harmonised policies. This needed to be reversed for ensuring uptake of economic growth on a sustained basis, she added.

Through CPEC, she said, Pakistan could boost its economy and exports as well as generate around 700,000 jobs but it required a lot of spade work before getting the desired results.

Hussain Dawood, chairman, Dawood Hercules Corporation Ltd and Engro Corporation Ltd, delivered an inspirational speech on the occasion. He said it was the worst time when half of their industries went away along with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, and the remaining were nationalised in Pakistan.

It was conveyed in straight and plain words that the private sector was considered as the engine of growth. Dawood said the Nawaz Sharif regime introduced the policy of liberalisation and deregulation which paved the way for increasing the role of the private sector. He went with the former premier Nawaz Sharif to China when CPEC was envisaged in 2013. On that occasion, he said the former prime minister had assigned him the task to generate 2,000MW electricity.

He said Engro obtained two blocks at Thar coal through which they could generate 5,000MW for 50 years. The chairman of Dawood Hercules said Pakistan needed to build a school every hour to put 300 kids in school in 24 hours, a task that no government was capable of accomplishing. Speaking of corporate social responsibility (CSR), he said Engro was building schools and hospitals in Thar to bring betterment in the lives of the people and to enable them to live with the current times.

Saeed Ahmed, former federal secretary, said there were nine factors that could be cited as major reasons for failing to achieve the desired results in Pakistan. Lack of coordinated policies, flawed fiscal policies, 10 tax amnesty schemes, increasing population, and others were behind these failures, he added.

SBP former governor Dr Ishrat Hussain said they recommended the government to ensure the autonomy of two dozen institutions under civil service reforms in 2008 which were never implemented. He said the military was criticised for increasing its space, but they introduced merit based policies, while the civilians failed to undertake reforms to overhaul bureaucracy.