ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The World Bank has said that Pakistan must speed up reforms in the energy sector and bring more women into the labor force to quicken its economic growth.
According to the World Bank’s country representative, Pakistan’s economy should expand with a 4.5 percent rate in the following year, a private news channel reported.
The World Bank claims to foresee Pakistan’s growth rate to edge up to 4.8 percent. In order to absorb fresh candidates in workforce the economy needs to expand by 6 percent every year, experts say.
Country Director of World Bank Illango Patchamuthu said Pakistan had promoted from a collapse in global oil prices and tough fiscal measures by the government over the past few years to even out the economy.
But he recommended faster development in the energy sector, which had suffered years and years of under-investment. Repeated power outages hurt growth and investment.
“To me, the whole story around power reforms is still only half done,” Patchamuthu said in an interview. He also advised that Pakistan should try to solve its circular debt problem, which grew out from unpaid subsidies of government. It makes up to a huge amount of $3 billion.
The government expects its electricity rationing system of “load shedding” to end by 2018 after it signed more than $30 billion in energy generation projects as part of the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Project.
Patchamuthu said the government was only paying attention to power generation but it must also improve the distribution and update their transmission system as well.
“A lot more needs to be done in the next several years to build up the whole power infrastructure,” he said. “If Pakistan wants to get to 7-8 percent (growth) with structural reforms, they also have to much more in drawing women into the labour force,” he said.
Source: APP
