Islamabad: Haroon Sharif, former Chairperson, Board of Investment, Pakistan, has said that the global leadership deficit is the major challenge we witnessed after the emergence of COVID-19.
Mr Sharif was addressing the Online Policy Dialogue on ‘Belt and Road Initiative as a Health Silk Route’ organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here Tuesday. The BOI Chief said that, China, despite mounting internal challenges, had to step up and lead the global efforts to mitigate the crisis.
He said that a resource vacuum is just looming on our heads and the world would become more fragmented then it was ever before. He observed that this scenario demands China to reshape its existing development initiatives such as BRI and CPEC with more focus on human development. He said that a healthcare economic zone was also needed urgently to respond to ever increasing demand and shortage of the supplies in the healthcare sector.
Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director, SDPI, said that it was time to explore new dimensions of the global and regional cooperation and health as well as knowledge economy must be the top considerations of development endeavours. He said that we must appreciate Chinese leadership for taking timely and rightly measures to contain the pandemic successfully in China and now the world is looking forward to get benefits from the treatment protocols applied by China in respond to the deadly virus.
Koh King Kee, president, Centre for New Inclusive Asia, Malaysia, was of the view that the working together is the only way forward for the world to respond to the crisis started by the COVID-19. He said the world economies are getting collapsed and hence, food security and agriculture are the areas that demand greater cooperation at every level.
Tang Bei, from Shanghai International Studies University, China, viewed that due to growing internal challenges, China may not initiate the new projects but the existing commitment such as CPEC should be focused. She said that the enhanced cooperation in healthcare sector would be important as future dimension and China is already lending support to countries in every parts of the world to cope with the ongoing crisis.
Hussein Askary, South-West Asia Coordinator for the International Schiller Institute, Sweden, termed the infrastructure development as the most crucial aspect of cooperation and said that BRI and CPEC have special significance in improving the healthcare facilities in different countries linked with these initiatives.
Earlier, Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, Consultant, SDPI, said that we need to look into emerging global needs in the aftermath of COVID-19. Mudassir Tipu, Director- General China Foreign Office of Pakistan, Dr Zahid Ahmed, Research Fellow at Deakin University, Australia, and Ayesha Almas, SDPI, also spoke on the occasion.
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