Strong economic discipline, management required for economic growth: Ahsan.

ISLAMABAD -- Federal Minister for Planning, Development, Reforms and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal on Monday said that economic growth in Pakistan requires strong fiscal discipline and economic management.

'We have to move towards export led growth and bring the tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio closer to the countries of the region,' he said.

He expressed these views while addressing the seminar on 'Unblock Pakistan's Economic Potential' organized by Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI).

He said that Pakistan was lagging behind the other countries of the region as our tax to GDP ratio had never been above 12%.

He lamented that Pakistan was also lagging behind in exports as compared to other regional countries including India and Bangladesh.

Ahsan said that at present Foreign Direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan was only $ 1.5 billion while in Vietnam it was $ 30 billion.

He pointed out that Pakistan's savings and investment ratio was very low which needs improvement.

He said we have not paid attention to human resource development, the dream of economic development cannot be fulfilled on 50% education.

'We have to make our youth skilled and educated. Because of the CPEC project, we got the attention of the world. The world wanted to invest here,' he said.

We took $29 billion from China and we spent Rs. 2,300 billion on CPEC projects from our development program.

He said that we have given a lasting infrastructure to...