Plan to provide 10 million jobs to be revised: Khusro

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar conceded that the PTI government would have to revise downward its plan for providing 10 million jobs envisaged under proposed upcoming 12th Five Year Plan in the wake of expected revision for finalisation of the GDP growth figure for last fiscal year.

Regarding market access of increasing $01 billion exports to China, the minister said that technical experts have finalised list of commodities almost three weeks back, and the commitment of market access was expected to become operational soon. “We will share details of complete breakup of all those sectors where these 10 million jobs will be created, including exporting labour-force abroad through upcoming 12th Five Year Plan from 2018-19 to 2022-23,” Federal Minister for Planning Khusro Bakhtyar told reporters in press briefing here at P Block on Wednesday.

Flanked by Secretary Planning Zafar Hasan and Chief Macroeconomics Zafar Ul Hasan Almas, the minister said that the government would scrutinise data on economic front from eminent economists for analysing true picture and would get their input on upcoming 12th Five Year Plan.

He said that the figures of Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) were already finalized, and, now, the GDP growth was expected to revise downward by 0.2 percent coming down to 5.6 percent from earlier 5.8 percent provisional growth figures announced last fiscal year under the PML-N led regime. Accordingly, the government will have to re-adjust its plan to provide 10 million jobs after revision into growth figures under upcoming 12th Five Year plan, he added.

When asked about dip in export of human resource development, the Planning Commission’s Macroeconomic chief Zafar Ul Hassan Almas replied that total export of labour-force stood at 3.6 million in last five year, but there was slight dip in it owing to sacking of workforce from some Gulf countries; however, the upcoming 12th Five Year Plan would come up with detailed breakup of the sectors for provision of 10 million jobs. When the minister was asked was changes in definition of public debt introduced during the PML-N led regime, he replied that there should be no figure fudging on economic data and added that the PTI led government would ensure transparency on this front.

When he was asked about the autonomy for the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), he said that he was in favour of autonomy for the PBS as experts would be brought into the Governing Council of the PBS. “We are not married to such positions forever, so the data should depict the real picture of the economy,” he added.

The minister said that the previous government missed all economic targets set in 11th five year plan from 2013-14 to 2017-18 adding that the performance remained off-track during the plan period.

The average real GDP growth of 4.8 percent during the plan masked many inequalities like crop sector grew marginally by 0.6 percent in these five years which employs 38 percent of labour force.

The 5.8% growth in 2017-18 was based upon seven months data and will be revised on the basis of full year data. One example is large-scale manufacturing where growth was taken at 6.1% (seven months) that will be revised downward to actual full year growth of 5.2%.

The consumption was artificially boosted to uplift economic growth through fiscal expansion and easy monetary policy. The quantum of consumption in Pakistan at 93 percent of GDP is one of the highest among emerging economies whereas investment and savings are one of the lowest. This ratio in India is 70 percent and in Bangladesh is 74 percent whereas investment in these countries is above 30 percent while in Pakistan this ratio is just 16 percent. The savings rate in Pakistan is less than half of these countries.

Total investment, he said, could not reach close to the target of 22.8 percent of the GDP and stood at 16.4%. The private investment rate continuously fell during the last four years in a row from 10.4 percent of the GDP in 2014-15 to just 9.8 percent in 2017-18 when interest rates were at their historical low level. Public investment increased by 1.2 percentage points in this period to keep investment almost stable. National savings could not reach even at half the targeted level of 21.3% and fell to 10.4%. The reckless borrowing increased the debt stock from Rs.16 trillion to around Rs30 trillion.