World Bank underscores importance of skills, workforce development
LAHORE: Mamta Murthi, Vice President of the World Bank Group’s People Vice Presidency, has underscored the importance of skills and workforce development in enabling people to earn a respectable livelihood.
She made these remarks at an expert roundtable on Pakistan’s Skills and Jobs Agenda, jointly convened by the Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF) and the World Bank Group at a local hotel. Representatives from Pakistan’s health, technology, and government sectors participated with the aim of charting a path from training to employment — and from domestic skills development to global labour market access.
The session was chaired by Mamta Murthi, Vice President, World Bank Group’s People Vice Presidency, and moderated by Ahmed Khan, CEO of PSDF.
The roundtable focused on two priority sectors — Human Resources for Health (HRH) and IT & IT Outsourcing (ITO) — alongside the governance and labour mobility frameworks required to support Pakistan’s skills transformation.
Speaking at the roundtable, Mamta Murthi said: “The real test is not the number of certificates or the number of people trained. The real test is whether people land in meaningful jobs. That must be — not a corollary — but the focus of skills and workforce development.”
Adnan Afzal Chattha, Chairman of the Chief Minister’s Task Force on Skills Development in Punjab announced that Punjab has committed to adopting the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), having signed an MoU with UK awarding bodies, and is actively finalising an agreement with an international healthcare placement partner to channel qualified Pakistani health workers to European markets.
He stated: “We want to train our workforce to the standard of the destination, not just the standard of the sending institution. Skilled manpower export is not a peripheral policy ambition — it is a macroeconomic imperative.”
Ahmed Khan, CEO of PSDF, said: “This roundtable has surfaced both the depth of the challenge and the clarity of the path forward. We are going to start working on the action steps, and we hope to have many more of these conversations until we get it right.”
Key Findings:
On the IT sector: Pakistan’s IT exports crossed USD 437 million in December 2025 — the first time a single month exceeded USD 400 million — and the sector is growing at 20 percent year-on-year. IT sector employability has increased from 10 percent to 32 percent over the past two to three years as a result of targeted, demand-led curriculum reform, demonstrating that the model works. A national centralised assessment of 41,000 final-year IT and CS graduates conducted in April 2026, using industry-designed questions, marks a significant step toward credible, independent quality measurement across the sector.
On the health sector: Pakistan produces approximately 5,600 nursing graduates per year, with international placement demand growing rapidly — particularly in Europe and the Gulf. Participants highlighted the strong momentum in health worker export and identified pre-departure language preparation, cultural immersion programmes, and strengthened embassy-level facilitation as the investments that would most accelerate Pakistan’s growing presence in international health labour markets.
On governance: Punjab has established an independent Department for Skills Development and Entrepreneurship — a landmark institutional development — consolidating the province’s skills bodies under a single accountability structure with a unified vision. Participants identified the formal mapping of Pakistan’s National Vocational Qualifications Framework to the European Qualifications Framework as the most important next step in unlocking Pakistan’s full access to European labour markets, a process Punjab is already actively pursuing through its engagement with UK awarding bodies.
Adnan Afzal Chattha confirmed that a three-year budget proposal has been submitted to the chief minister for approval — covering EQF adoption, international employer partnerships, Punjab Board of Technical Education reform, and the scale-up of rural women’s, IT, hospitality, and agriculture programmes.
He stated, “We are always looking forward to your guidance and experience. Wherever you are working with other stakeholders in the world, we are ready to learn from you and work with you.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026