LAHORE: Federal Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said that economy of the country will soon be revived by overcoming the financial crises, left by the previous rulers.
Addressing the 56th annual general meeting of Institution of Engineers Pakistan at a local hotel here on Saturday, he said that the country’s economy suffered a loss of $30 billion due to the flood in Sindh and Balochistan which had been managed by the government from cutting off the funds from the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).
He said that the PML-N government from 2013 to 2018 uplifted the economy and several mega projects including the CPEC were introduced but, unfortunately the experiment of bringing the PTI rule shrank the PSDP to Rs500 billion in April 2021.
He said the PML-N government launched the energy projects of 11000 mega watts during the tenure of four years till 2018 and laid down the motorways network of 2000 kilometres and eradicated the terrorism in the country and Rs500 billion were spent on the war on terrorism.
The minister said that the elections could not be held without the digital census and its results would be compiled till April 2023 so new elections could not be held before October 2023.
To a question about dialogues with the PTI chairman Imran Khan, he said a politician could not avoid elections however, conditions could not be put before any dialogue and clarified that elections could not be held before the completion of the tenure.
He said that the world was turning towards the skilled based education so did the Pakistan, adding the Ministry of Planning was giving a one-year internship to 20,000 young engineers in the development projects through which they would be given Rs40,000 per month for one year.
He said that an amount of Rs6.5 billion had been approved for five engineering universities and construction of a world-class laboratory.
A State of the Art Science and Engineering University would be built after the name of renowned scientist and hero late Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan at the cost of Rs3 billion, he said.
He said that the laptop scheme for the students would be restarted soon to promote skilled based education and to compete the world.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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