Pak: Govt to invest Rs 435-bn in various sectors

Karachi: The federal government is likely to invest some Rs 435 billion in agriculture, small and medium enterprises, housing and construction, information and communication technology and export sectors in coming fiscal year aimed at generating over 400,000 new jobs across the country.

Official sources said that Islamabad was seriously considering to invest large amount in said sectors, aimed to create new job opportunities across country, which was almost 60 percent higher than the allocation made in the preceding years.

'These sectors have potential for a fairly diversified employment generation through direct and indirect ways and hopefully they would be identified as 'labour incentive sectors' for workers', they hoped.

They said that around 4.94 million additional work opportunities would be created in coming years intended to reduce the upward trend in unemployment rate, which skyrocketed during last few years.

Although unemployment rate has declined and presently stood at 6.2 percent, government is sketching out more strategies to reduce unemployment rate further in next FY, they added.

Officials said that Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) 2005-10 and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) had been prepared in line with these developments, which would create a sustainable economic system besides reducing poverty across the country. They hoped that these strategies would achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) till 2015.

They further said that it would help enhance competitiveness in these sectors besides maximising the knowledge and skills of workers, which would have direct effect on the Total Factor Productivity (TFP).

When asked who were participating more as labour force gender-wise they dispelled the general perception and said that due to an increasing participation females could make possible to scale down ratio of unemployment, which was very significant for economic growth. Hence the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) was being increased in both genders at urban and rural areas, respectively.

Despite the fact that females are helping their families out from poverty-circle and stabilising them economically, community is still discouraging this weak segment of the society to earn bread for their families. They said that LFPR in females were phenomenal in last few years, which was about one fourth in rural areas while one tenth ratio was witnessed in urban areas, they informed. It may be cited that unemployment rate of overall population was 33 percent whereas around 45 million people are living below poverty line because of unemployment, however, 70 percent of them was young blood and living in rural areas, sources revealed as per independent survey report.