LAHORE: Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said all must come forward to take part in country’s progress.

Addressing CEO summit, he said that resource-rich Pakistan was facing scores of challenges due to political instability adding that economic stability could only be achieved through political stability.

He said Pakistan was leading economy until 1999 and PML-N’s vision 2010 in 1997 could have helped country export electricity to India but overthrow of PML-N’s democratic government in 1998 resulted in pushing Pakistan behind India and Bangladesh. If we did not learn from our past, Pakistan could even be superseded by Afghanistan in coming decades, he added.

He said that when PML-N came into power in 2013, country was in grips of acute power shortage, terrorism, and extremism. Political opposition mocked government when PML-N gave Vision 2025 and sought help from all stakeholders to eradicate power shortage, terrorism and extremism from country, he added. He said Pakistan’s per capita GDP was $ 300 as compared to China’s $ 200 in 1980 and world started to see Pakistan among top 20 economies of world in 2017. PML-N left development budget at $ 1,000 billion in 2018 but during PTI s tenure, it contracted to $ 550 billion.

Published in The Daily National Courier, December, 16 2022

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