Moot to tackle dearth of expert human resource

ISLAMABAD, Oct 14: The country is facing a dearth of expert human resource, and Pakistani experts in various fields should serve the motherland for economic growth in these hard times.

At a press conference on Monday, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said that the government would hold a ‘national conference’ in Islamabad on Oct 26 to determine directions for devising a future economic agenda of the country.

“There is a severe human resource deficit at highest level and we will ask Pakistanis who are international experts to serve the country.”

He that the government would kick-start consultations on its Vision-2025, and the next five-year plan from Oct 26, and the consultations would continue till the end of December 2013.

The national conference would be chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, he said.

He expressed the hope that all political parties would nominate their representatives for participation in consultative process for devising a national economic agenda.

Mr Iqbal said that so far the PPP leadership had nominated its representative Salem Mandviwalla for this consultation process.

Pakistan’s economy, he said, would have to achieve a leap forward by enhancing its exports up to $100 billion before 2025 and increasing tax-to-GDP ratio by over 5pc jacking it up to 14pc from existing below 9pc.

He said that there would a major difference in the planning process of the country as they were establishing a delivery unit in the Planning Commission to monitor progress of ministries and divisions on a monthly basis and track down their performance for achieving targets.

Over 1000 stakeholders belonging to political parties, professionals, economists, academicians and others would participate in the national conference.

He said that restructuring process of Planning Commission would follow hiring of members purely on merit. The government was also going to implement young development fellowship programme by giving stipends to those young Pakistanis who want to contribute to country’s betterment.

He said that participants of the upcoming national conference would be bifurcated into 40 to 50 groups to hold day-long consultations on different topics, including security for development.