PM’s adviser raises alarm over Sindh’s sinking per capita income

SUKKUR: Dr Ishrat Hussain, Adviser to Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity, on Friday expressed grave concern over declining per capita income in Sindh as compared to other provinces.

“Sindh was ahead of other three provinces in per capita income at the time of partition by 55 percent in 1955, 30 percent in 1990, 15 percent in 2014-15 and in 2019, the province is lesser in per capita income to all the other provinces,” Hussain said speaking at a moot at Sindh University (SU).

The event was organised by Bureau of Students Tutorial Guidance/Counseling Services and Co-curricular Activities (STAGS) in collaboration with JS Bank Limited and Oxford University Press, Pakistan, to discuss the book “The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future” with VC-SU Prof.

“This is shocking picture to weigh. We need to flip this phenomenon,” Dr Hussain pleaded with the participants.

He said Sindh was resource-rich with clear comparative advantages of having sea-ports, human resource talent, intellectual property pool, large tracts of irrigated lands, natural gas and coal reservoirs and a dynamic private sector, but all to no avail; because of their lack of knack to exploit those resources to their true potential.

“I see urban-rural disparity, low ratio of female education, low female participation in labour-force, absence of cottage industry and small-scale market economy, and paucity of micro-economic sector, i.e., dairy, fisheries, poultry, livestock, fertilisers and horticulture as causes behind socio-economic deterioration in Sindh.”

“And I recommend immediate policy and urgent action interventions as a panacea to end these ailments, the former central bank governor emphasised.

He further said that merely writing a book on the economy of Sindh was not enough and argued that it was essential to build upon the book in the form of holding critical discourses on its contents among academia and students to cascade its import to the widest possible range of masses.

Basir Shamsie, CEO and presisent JS Bank, in his address, stressed upon bringing industry back to its original destinations in the wake of improved security and infrastructural landscape in Pakistan.

“Our capital that lies land-locked in form of lands without housing and real estate boom needs to be unlocked to usher economic development in Sindh and this is exactly what this book on economy of Sindh insists,” Shamsie said.

He said these were the times of collaborative and partnership ventures.

Quoting ‘Uber’ and ‘Careem’ as case studies, Shamsie argued that technology, human resource (driver), bank (finance), and government (infrastructure) put together formed a successful model of modern business.

Dr Fateh Muhammad Burfat, vice chancellor SU, citing words of Quid-e-Azam argued that economic uplift would not be possible without women joining national work-force as they were the greater pocket of population in the country.

The vice chancellor said SU was planning to send the varsity’s commerce and business interns to local small town cottage industry sector with a view to research their problems and growth prospects.

Dr Burfat also thanked the distinguished panelists and JS Bank Limited leadership for bringing this high-power knowledge economy dialogue to SU.

“Our faculty, social science researchers and students have greatly benefited from this interaction,” he observed.