Pakistan achieves significant improvement in overall security landscape: E-Survey

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has achieved progressive and significant improvement in country's overall security landscape in recent years despite conflict and continuing instability in Afghanistan.

An Economic Survey 2016-17 announced at a press conference by Minister for Finance, Muhammad Ishaq Dar here on Thursday revealed that this has been accomplished largely due to successful counter terrorism efforts of the government under framework of comprehensive National Action Plan (NAP), backed by an extensive and highly effective counter terrorism operation Zarb-e-Azb by armed forces, and actions by other security and law enforcement agencies and intelligence-based operations across the country.

The survey showed that after successful completion of Zarb-e- Azb, a country-wide operation Radd-ul-Fasaad has been launched for eliminating any residual or latent threats.

It said due to war in Afghanistan, Pakistan has faced the most serious consequences - from political to security, socio-economic and environmental - over the decades.

From hosting millions of refugees to being a major victim of terrorism, the cumulative impact has been enormous, with adverse overall growth rate in all major sectors of economy, the survey said.

As per survey normal economic and trading activities were disrupted, resulting in higher costs of doing business including cost of insurance and significant delays in meeting export orders around globe.

As a result, Pakistani products gradually lost their market share to their competitors.

Pakistan continues to be a target of terrorism, including foreign-sponsored terrorism from its immediate neighbourhood, the survey said and added a substantial portion of precious national resources, both men and material, had to be diverted to address security challenges and to repair damaged infrastructure during last many years.

In addition to economic losses, cross border terrorism in Pakistan has inflicted untold human suffering resulting from indiscriminate and brutal terrorist attacks against civilian population.

In this backdrop, success in counter-terrorism has played a critical role in creating a conducive economic environment whose results have now started appearing in terms of growth across different segments of the economy.

As a result of these efforts, the total losses incurred due to incidents of terrorism are declining. The direct and indirect cost incurred has been gradually declining.

During 2015-16, it declined by 29.8 percent while during July-March 2016-17, it declined by 40.2 percent which clearly reflects effectiveness of the government's efforts to eliminate terrorism and extremism from the country.

In order to assess the impact of the incidents of terrorism on economy of Pakistan during past several years, the estimates for Fiscal Year 2016 have been updated and FY -2017 have been prepared.