Pakistan can become high-income economy: WB

KARACHI: Pakistan can join the group of high-income economies if the country achieves sustainable GDP growth rate of eight percent, a World Bank’s official said on Thursday.

“On the flip side in case the country maintains as usual growth rate of 4-5 percent then in next 30 years half of the population will not be able to get social benefits,” Patchamuthu Illangovan, country director Pakistan of the World Bank said, addressing a summit on ‘Scaling the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

Women Committee of Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan organised the event. The World Bank’s country director said the bank has been working in the country for the past many decades in many areas of development. He said the population in Pakistan is growing at two and a half percent annually. “At this rate the youth of this country will face serious crisis in job market.”

The bank’s representative advised the government to take measures in removing gender gap, create opportunities for women entrepreneurs and invest in human capital skills. Illangovan said the government should increase spending on education and health in order to achieve targets for fourth industrial revolution.

Murad Ali Shah, chief minister of Sindh said women have pivotal role in economic growth. The chief minister said the provincial government has initiated several projects through its women development department to remove obstacles in women participation.

Shah said the fourth industrial revolution has already impacted the world as many sectors switched to knowledge-based technology. He said the provincial government has also computerised many departments to facilitate people. “Land department has been computerised. Revenue department is gathering details of properties’ ownership.”

The provincial chief minister said in the past financial details were kept secret, but now all details of expenditures and income are available at the finance department’s web portal. He stressed the need of revisiting priority related to human capital development. “We are imparting information technology training to 15,000 employees,” he said.

Attaur Rehman, chairman of United Nations Committee of Science, Technology and Innovation said the world is advancing and knowledge-based technology replaced the conventional way of working.

Rehman said artificial sighting, digital dressing, automatic healing and anti-aging instruments are now commercially available. He said Singapore and China achieved high economic growth through educating their youth. China sent abroad a huge number of youth for getting degrees in specialised fields.

Rehman, who’s served as minister for education, lamented that Pakistan came down in the ranking of higher education as now only one university is ranked among top 500 universities of the world. He said digital age is impacting Pakistan and growth in mobile telephony is its best example.