ISLAMABAD:A Spokesman of the Planning Commission (PC) on Monday contradicted a news item appeared in a section of the press attributing to the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission regarding Nuclear programme, as "baseless".
"The news item published on Monday, December 26, was totally misquoted. The contents of the presentation of Dr. Haque, had nothing to do with the "Nuclear Aspect", the Spokesman siad in his statement.
The Spokesman further clarified that the presentation was focused on "The New Growth Strategy" which was approved by "National Economic Council".
The same lecture was delivered to the participants of National Security Workshop at the NDU last week, he remarked.
The Spokesman added that the message of Dr. Haque in conversation with the reporter was that "we should focus on growth and development keeping it independent of defence and strategic issues".
He said that Planning Commission of Pakistan has organized a series of workshops on New Growth Strategy which is part of the stakeholders dialogue organized already at 20 universities in 8 cities across the country and the workshop in the National Defence University was part of this series.
This Workshop was part of a consultation process involving all stakeholders for creating economic literacy and local ownership of the economic reforms under the Framework for Economic Growth of Pakistan formulated by the Planning Commission, he remarked.
The Framework for Economic Growth of Pakistan formulated by the Planning Commission provides for a strategy that seeks accelerated and sustained growth and development.
It comes at a time when the global recession, war on terror and other factors arising out of rampant corruption and governance issues have severely constrained the economic growth in Pakistan.
An unintended consequence of our policies has been the stifling of internal markets, cities and communities, which play a critical role in fostering productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship and ultimately promote growth, prosperity and development.
Productivity is declining and there is no comprehensive and integrated mechanism available for increasing the competitiveness and good governance.
Under these environments Pakistan has been facing new challenges in this 21st century. All stakeholders have to deal with the issues of cultural change and with the more informed masses to address the uncertainty present in social, economic and political issues, he added.
The Spokesman said that Media is now more vibrant and liberal for facilitating this process and the focus of workshop was to ascertain stakeholders' views, create societal awareness and local ownership of economic reform to facilitate implementation of new growth framework in the context of certain themes of the growth strategy.
These include role of government and result based management in public sector and civil service reform, energy, market reforms and entrepreneurship, urban management and connectivity and youth and community engagement.
The workshop at National Defence University has been deferred and the new date will be announced as soon as possible.
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