Federal Minister for Planning and Development, Ahsan Iqbal on Wednesday inaugurated National Centre of Robotics & Automation (NCRA) at College of Electrical & Mechanical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST).
The NCRA is designed on a consortium model, with 11 labs from 13 Pakistani universities as part of the Centre, with NUST as the leading partner.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony of NCRA at the College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, the interior minister said that Vision 2025 is a roadmap to put Pakistan in top 25 economies by 2025. The government has focused on youth and technology, as these are the guarantees to development, he added.
Ahsan Iqbal further said that this year three more national centers of excellence will be established in the fields of space technology and computational science to lead Pakistan's journey to the modern digital economy. "Today we are inaugurating the last of the 4 national centers of excellences. The centers cover Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing & Big Data, Cyber Security and Robotics & Automation," he added.
The minister further said that under the Vision 2025, the government identified that youth and technology as Pakistan's most lethal combination to take the march forward at full speed in the new knowledge economy.
The prudent policies pursued by the government have laid foundations for a modern economy, said the minister, adding that with removal of bottlenecks in energy sector, infrastructure development, investment of billions of dollars and the economy growing between three to six percent, Pakistan is poised to take off to next level of development.
He said after building infrastructure, the present government started focusing on investing in higher sectors of economy. "We have a lot to do to eliminate extremism and hate from our society," said the minister, adding that the bullet pierced his body but not his spirit.He further said peace, stability and continuity of policies are the key elements and of vital importance to achieve fast paced economic development and prosperity. The interior minister said that the backbone of terrorism has been broken and the war on terror is still continuing to completely eradicate it. "We have to maintain unity and solidarity among our ranks to achieve the desired results," he added.
Terrorism has been curtailed to a large extent in 2018 as compared to five years back, and people are now witnessing that peace has been restored in the country.
Pakistan is a story of successes and development which should be disseminated to the world to discard negative perception of the country, the minister added. He said GDP growth has reached almost 6 percent compared to around 3 percent in 2013. Furthermore investors were shifting from the country, but due to improved security situation, the confidence of the investors has been restored.
He said that Pakistan was far behind of the other regional countries in adopting 2G technology, but the country has not only surpassed them in 3G and 4G but would be among the top countries to go for 5G once it commercially becomes available as all the preparations have been put in place in this regard.
He said, in 2013, Pakistan was being declared as a dangerous country but at present the country is being declared as an emerging economy of Asia due to prudent economic policies of the incumbent government. The minister further said that the world renowned economic institutions are also acknowledging the economic achievements of Pakistan.
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