Institutions will have to cut their expenditures for putting the country on the right track: Ahasn Iqbal

LAHORE, Feb 24 (SABAH): Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiates, Professor Ahasn Iqbal Chauhdry has said that institutions will have to cut expenditures for putting the country on the right track as well as making it independent again.

Ahasn Iqbal expressed these views while addressing the participants of senior management course at Staff College on Friday. He said that private and foreign investment was the need of hour for bringing economic stability in the country and stressed upon the important role of bureaucracy in implementing the government policies.

He further said that when Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) came into power in 1997 it tried to bring economic stability in the country which it repeated in 2013 but political anarchy has always derailed the country from the path of development.

The minister said when there was no electricity in the country and it was under the wave of terrorism then PML-N took it out of crises and just after the passage of four years, the ambassadors of bid countries used to ask questions like where should they invest in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan.

“We produced 11000 MW of electricity only in the period of four years and benefited the economy of the country amounting to billions of rupees but political anarchy destroyed each and every over here,” he deplored.

By sacrificing its own politics, he said the PML-N saved the state and added when it took over there were no funds even for the development projects. He also stressed upon the need of increasing tax collection for putting the country on the right track. He said there is a need of bringing new people in the tax net and furthered a number of businesses were being shifted from Pakistan to Dubai which was exacerbating the situation.

He maintained there is need of implementing artificial intelligence in the future and there is also need of dividing the civil service examination into branches where first should be foreign service, second ought to be related to economics or finance and third should be from media.

Moreover, Ahsan Iqbal added the individuals should be appointed on the seats according their subjects, adding that they will try to further improve the civil services too as world dimensions were rapidly changing which necessitated bringing changes in this regard.