Sustainable Development Goals: Qureshi for building partnership between public, private sectors

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has called for building partnership between the public and private sectors in order to take forward the country and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Speaking at the launching event of the Pakistan Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Investment Report 2021 – Leveraging Private Investments for Pakistan’s Sustainable Development – prepared under the lead of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Board of Investment (BOI).

The report is aimed at leveraging private sector investments in public sector development projects aligned with the country’s SDGs.

In his speech, the foreign minister emphasised the need for innovative and “out of the box” approaches in order to ensure sustainable growth.

“The government of Pakistan is consistently communicating its desire to attract direct foreign investment and technology transfers to Pakistan to be part of global value chains,” Qureshi said, adding: “We are fully committed to mobilising public and private investment on sustainable infrastructure and climate finance.”

He said that Pakistan will not move ahead, if we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. “In the last two years under the difficult Covid conditions, we did recover and today, the World Bank endorses that Pakistan has made an encouraging growth of 5.37 percent,” he added.

He recalled that in August 2018 when the PTI came to office, all the macroeconomic indicators were pointing at the wrong directions and there was an “economic hole” of $20 billion.

He stated that China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) helped Pakistan, but that was not enough and the country had to go to the IMF programme.

He added that the objectives of an IMF programme and the objectives of the SDGs cannot go hand in hand. “What would the IMF would tell us – mend your house better and rightly so contain your fiscal deficit through austerity, mobilize resources to bridge the deficit and growth will come later…We are linking development growth to development,” the foreign minister added.

The foreign minister said the government has launched a new national security policy, which focuses on economic security, adding that the policy is a multi-dimensional in scope as it also involved food and water security.

“We have also launched an innovative universal health insurance scheme, which will encourage private sector to make investments in the rural areas for the construction of health facilities,” he added.

He said the government is also introducing a new local government system under which the people will directly elect mayors in order to improve service delivery.

He particularly highlighted the need to focus on health, agriculture, renewable energy and infrastructure in order to ensure that development is sustainable.

The foreign minister also reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment towards facilitating its international partners to strengthen their economic and development investments in Pakistan and encouraged them to benefit from the unique propositions presented in the report.

The report has been prepared with support from the UNDP Pakistan.

“To ensure that financing for COVID-19 recovery is aligned with the SDGs, we have partnered with the Government of Pakistan to identify and prioritise investments in the sectors of climate change, social services, infrastructure, information technology, as well as flexible investment solutions for global investors,” said UNDP Pakistan Resident Representative Knut Ostby, in his remarks.

Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood said on the occasion that the report’s main objective is to attract private sector investments by identifying Pakistan’s development priorities and benefit from trade-offs with sustainable development.

Presenting an overview of the report, UNDP Senior Advisor on Finance for Development and Former State Minister Haroon Sharif informed that the report is a culmination of joint efforts by Foreign Office, UNDP, and Board of Investment, whereby, Pakistan also successfully presented its $2 billion country investment portfolio at the global SDG Investment Fairs held in 2021 where Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance also participated.

He said that the report aims to help Pakistan create a positive shift in focus from a narrative approach to policy action based on measurable economic diplomacy and investment.

A first of its kind for Pakistan, he added that the report provides an overview of Pakistan’s policy priorities, regulatory environment, and its private sector development context.

He further stated that it aims to create strategic partnerships with international investors looking for impact investments, particularly in the areas of climate change and climate financing, the SMEs and industrial development, the ICTs, healthcare and education, and transportation and logistics.

He said that the report will form the basis of the extensive work the UNDP is doing under its flagship SDG Impact Initiative, the SDG Investor Map, adding that it will empower investors with clarity, insights, and tools for exploring exciting new avenues to expand the pool of public and private sector financing for targeted sustainable development projects in Pakistan.

It will also identify a range of market-specific investment opportunities for SDG-aligned capital deployment backed up by country-specific data and evidence, translating SDG needs and policy priorities into actionable investment opportunity areas (IOAs) to ensure the country “Leaves No One Behind”, he added.

The report noted that Pakistan offers multi-billion dollar investment opportunities in sectors aligned with the SDGs. These sectors include transport and logistics, renewables and alternative energy, healthcare, education, and technology and communication. Projects have been identified to expand highways for connecting lagging regions, renewable energy, electric vehicle infrastructure, digital education, medical equipment manufacturing, and various technology start-ups.

It further noted that the CPEC offers enormous opportunities in trade and transport logistics, skill development, and developing regional value chains with western China and central Asia. The report proposed a USD 1 billion SDG financing pilot program to demonstrate sustainable and innovative partnerships for shared prosperity, stability and development, in order to achieve the promise of Agenda 2030: From stabilization to growth, it noted that Pakistan’s economy has shown great resilience in dealing with the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, while simultaneously putting in place key policies and reforms to stabilize fiscal imbalances.

“With a 3.98 percent GDP growth rate in 2020-2021, Pakistan aims to achieve a 5 to 6 percent growth in the next two years. The Government’s stimulus package, combined with incentives to large-scale manufacturing to reduce the cost of doing business, has resulted in a 9 percent increase in the industry in 2020-21,” the report stated in its executive summary.

It added that the focus is now on increasing agriculture productivity, reaching out to marginalized segments, and export promotion to sustain the momentum of growth in the country.

With a 3.98 percent GDP growth rate in 2020-2021, Pakistan aims to achieve a 5 to 6 percent growth in the next two years, it stated.

In terms of Pakistan’s economic recovery from the Covid pandemic, it added that the country has done well in terms of containing the outbreak which started in March 2020. As the country was hit by the third wave of COVID-19 earlier this year, a well-coordinated targeted lockdown strategy and large-scale vaccination campaign has helped Pakistan slow down the threat of the pandemic, it added.

It further noted that more than 10 million people have received vaccinations and the coverage is being expanded systematically.

A critical element of economic recovery was a well targeted fiscal stimulation package announced in early 2020. The fiscal package of approximately PKR 1.27 trillion (three percent of the GDP) aimed at supporting the economic activity through achieving key strategic priorities, it added.

The targeted outcomes of the fiscal stimulus included increased capacity of the healthcare sector, cash support to the poor and vulnerable, and support to businesses and industry to mitigate losses due to the lockdown, it stated, adding that the programme has successfully managed to reach approximately 15 million families thus far with the help of large-scale poverty surveys and partner microfinance and other grassroots organisations.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022