Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said that Pakistan’s central economic challenge is to convert macroeconomic stability into sustained growth, higher productivity, exports, investment and employment.
“Pakistan should not be viewed merely through the prism of its challenges, but through the scale of its underlying potential. With a population of nearly 260 million, a large youth cohort, strategic geographic location, considerable agricultural and mineral resources, an expanding digital economy and a strong global diaspora, Pakistan possesses significant foundations for long-term economic transformation,” the federal minister said while addressing a visiting delegation of Harvard Business School MBA students on Friday.
Welcoming the HBS students to the Ministry of Planning and Development, Iqbal said Pakistan must break the recurring cycle of “boom, external account pressure, stabilisation and slowdown” by restructuring the economy around productivity and exports.
“Stabilisation is necessary, but stabilisation alone is not development. Pakistan cannot austerity its way to prosperity. We have to earn our prosperity through productivity, innovation, investment and exports,” he added.
The minister briefed the students on URAAN Pakistan, the government’s national transformation framework built around the 5Es: exports, enterprise and employment; e-Pakistan and the digital economy; environment, climate change, food and water security; energy and infrastructure; and equity, ethics and empowerment.
Pakistan, Iqbal further said, has set the ambition of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2035, but stressed that the objective was not simply to achieve a numerical GDP target.
“The real question is what Pakistan will be capable of producing and selling competitively to the world in 2035 that it cannot produce today. Development is ultimately about building national capabilities,” he said.
He identified productivity, quality and innovation as critical determinants of Pakistan’s future competitiveness. He said the government was seeking to build a national culture around Productivity, Quality and Innovation (PQI) so that “Made in Pakistan” increasingly becomes associated globally with reliability, quality and value.
Highlighting the importance of human capital, he said Pakistan’s greatest resource is its people and warned that a young population could become a demographic liability unless supported by education, nutrition, healthcare, skills and employment.
Human capital is our most important infrastructure, the planning minister said. “The enduring strength of advanced economies lies not only in physical assets but in the intellectual software generated by their universities, research institutions and innovation ecosystems.”
Artificial intelligence, he said, is creating a historic opportunity for developing economies, but countries that fail to develop technological capabilities risk falling on the wrong side of a new global intelligence divide. Pakistan, he added, must become not merely a consumer of emerging technologies but a producer and adapter of technologies in areas such as AI, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, agriculture and space sciences.
Speaking on climate change, he said Pakistan’s experience had demonstrated that climate resilience could no longer be treated as a separate environmental issue, as it directly affects fiscal stability, food security, infrastructure, public health and poverty.
He also highlighted the evolving role of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, saying that while CPEC’s first phase focused substantially on infrastructure and energy, its next phase must increasingly centre on industrial cooperation, technology transfer, agriculture, exports and business-to-business partnerships.
Referring to the political economy of reform, he said one of Pakistan’s most important requirements is continuity of policies over an extended period.
“Successful nations may follow different economic models, but they share one common characteristic: continuity of direction. Economic development is the compound interest of good policies consistently implemented over time.”
