Employment opportunities: FPCCI VP urges govt to implement reforms

KARACHI: Vice President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Muhammad Aman Pracha has urging the government of Pakistan to preserve the hard-won gains in poverty reduction and implement reforms that expand employment opportunities for youth and women.

He called for investing in people, building resilience to shocks, improving fiscal discipline, and establishing reliable data systems for effective policy-making. Expressing concern over the World Bank’s recent report indicating that poverty in Pakistan has increased by 7 percent over the past three years, he said that according to the World Bank, poverty in Pakistan reached 25.3 percent during the fiscal year 2023-24. He added that in recent years, the government has claimed to be making efforts to reduce poverty, and both the government and particularly the State Bank of Pakistan have asserted that poverty was declining. However, the World Bank's report has contradicted these claims.

He explained that over the past 3 to 4 years, Pakistan faced multiple shocks such as floods, COVID-19, inflation, and an economic crisis. Although the government tried to shield the public from these shocks, poverty could not be reduced.

Quoting the World Bank report, Aman Pracha said that in 2001, Pakistan had managed to reduce the poverty rate from 64.3 percent to 21.9 percent by 2018, which was a major achievement. However, the pace of poverty reduction slowed after 2015, and recent crises have reversed much of the progress.

According to the statistics, in 2021-22, the poverty rate was 18.3 percent in 2022-23, it rose to 24.8 percent in 2023-24, and it reached 25.3 percent. He noted that millions of households in Pakistan still remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty with even minor shocks. Under the international poverty line (daily per capita income of $4.20), 45 percent of Pakistan's population was considered poor in 2018 — significantly higher than peer countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Türkiye, and Egypt. He further highlighted that rural poverty (28.2 percent) is nearly double that of urban poverty (10.9 percent), with Balochistan being the most affected province, where the poverty rate stands at 42.7 percent.

Aman Pracha emphasized that climate change is playing a significant role in increasing poverty. Pakistan is among the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, even though its share in global carbon emissions is less than 1 percent. He pointed out that the 2022 floods alone reduced national output by 2.2 percent, with the poor being the most affected.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025