President General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday urged the political power holders in the country to maintain a stable political environment for continuity and sustainability of development policies, and to make the 'Vision 2030' a reality.
"We have to have a stable political environment," he said at the launching ceremony of 'Vision 2030' programme, held at Aiwan-e-Sadr. The 'Vision' envisages a roadmap for future development in key areas of national importance.
The gathering being addressed by the President comprised National Assembly Speaker Amir Hussain, Governors and Chief Ministers of NWFP and Balochistan, federal ministers, parliamentarians, federal secretaries, diplomats and senior government officials.
The President spoke of the 'Vision' that looks for a "developed, industrialised, just and prosperous Pakistan through rapid and sustainable development in a resource-constrained economy by deploying knowledge inputs."
He called for a "balanced political approach" to allow the government, coming through a fair and transparent election, to continue for five years so that it can focus on the plans and achieve the objectives.
He said that in the run-up to the election, it was extremely important that "we develop national consensus on issues, challenges and threats. We have to generate political reconciliation to meet those [threats] and finally ensure good governance." The President said: "If we can meet these, Insha Allah, Pakistan has a very bright future ahead." He said that it was also vital that "we maintain harmony externally, peace within and peace without."
In this connection he referred to the efforts being made for peace with India and the approach to ensure that things stabilise in Afghanistan and on the borders within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). "We have to achieve these targets so that our 'Vision 2030' continues moving unimpeded by these centrifugal forces that may harm it and may create obstacles."
The President said that it was the duty of every government to ensure security, progress and development of a nation and wellbeing of its people. He said that security of Pakistan was paramount, and stressed that it never could come from weakness, but from strength.
"Our potential to deal with external threat must remain always," the President said, and added that "at the same time, the government must be able to maintain security from internal threats".
He mentioned a series of challenges, like population growth, shortage of water resources, food and energy security, environmental issues, and globalisation, and said: "We have to surmount all these boldly, and cannot brush these under the carpet."
Otherwise, the President said, the challenges like power generation, scarcity of water, issue of construction of major water reservoirs, population growth and "the forces that are in conflict to our national harmony and integrity" would create obstructions at a later stage.
"They erupt as challenges ... we cannot do this anymore ... we must face these challenges boldly, confront them and defeat them and carry on going on the path of our future vision," the President said.
Musharraf said there was need to develop infrastructure and communication, and termed it vital for the country's development. He said that it was important to convert the railways tracks to standard gauge and to have faster trains to create linkages with Central Asian Republics and country's sea ports.
He talked about the need for larger water reservoirs to preserve the precious water resources, besides brick lined water courses and canals to irrigate larger areas.
The President referred to the country's large coal reserves and said that China was meeting 70 percent of its energy requirements by using coal. He said that Pakistan has huge untapped potential, including alternative sources for energy, which also needed to be exploited.
President Musharraf called for achieving greater food security through yield and area intensification. He said there was wide scope for growth in the livestock and dairy sectors where, with even little investment, good results could be achieved rapidly.
"The 'white revolution' must be pursued vigorously, bringing the rural areas at par with the developed areas," he said. He called for managing the population growth, besides protection of environment, countering deforestation and building road, rail, energy and pipeline links with the Central Asian Republics.
The President said that industrialisation was very vital for the country's progress and development, and added hat the government was offering numerous incentives to foreign and local investors.
He said that welfare of the people was at the centre of all developmental activities, and added that poverty had been reduced from 33 percent to 24.3 percent due to government efforts and pointed that still one person out of four was very poor, but vowed that "we cannot allow this to continue".
He pointed to the need for human resource development and improving the quality of the population. He said there was also need to concentrate on primary and secondary healthcare, besides having holistic approach towards education.
He stressed neesd for skill development as part of growing industrialisation and said that greater synchronisation between the universities, industry and vocational training was required.
He talked of the ambitious programme of establishing nine foreign universities in the country to impart quality education to the ypuths. Earlier, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz presented the 'Vision 2030' documents to the President.
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