India and Pakistan should live with peace and shun all tensions in order to use their resources for eradication of poverty, unemployment and illiteracy from the region, said a former Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, here on Thursday night. Naidu, who is on a goodwill visit to Pakistan, was addressing members of Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) and business men of the area at a reception hosted by RCCI. Najam Rehan, president of Rawalpindi Chamber, presided over the function.
Naidu stressed the need of joint efforts from every shade of opinion for resolving all outstanding issues between the two countries by peaceful means. "We have to live with peace, end the hostilities. We have to use our resources for eradication of poverty and enhancing the living standard of the people," he said.
"It is the need of the our that besides resolving political issues as soon as possible we have should formulate better policies to quell poverty and other menaces we are confronted with," he said, adding that the two governments have a lot of potential to resolve the issues but it needs dedicated efforts.
He said that economic co-operation would help the two countries to attain sustainability and stability in all fields, and added that the two countries have great potential to become world leaders, "but this potential is not being utilised properly".
He said that information technology has reduced the distances and brought the entire world into a small box. "People who adopted IT have a bright future and they would have a prosperous future," he added.
Naidu, who is a business tycoon in information technology, said: "For the past nine years I am working in this field and introduced it in my state. A population of 170 million is heading towards real prosperity". He said that Andhra Pradesh has literacy rate of 73 percent at the moment and a target of chasing 100 percent for 2006 has been fixed. "We have set up engineering colleges to produce 18,000 engineers a year; 250 business colleges were set up in the state to produce a good lot of business executives. Medical colleges and other institution are besides this", he said adding that main reason of the socio economic development of his state was real empowerment of women.
In his address, RCCI president said that co-operation of India and Pakistan in economic and other fields is the need of the hour is and imperative for the two countries to get rid of poverty and other menaces.
He said RCCI is making efforts for industrialisation in the region. It is to the credit of RCCI that it had laid the foundation of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI).
Pakistan, he said, is on way to economic stability and prosperity. "Against the targeted annual growth of 8.43 percent, our exports increased by 13.2 percent during the first half of the current fiscal year, and despite major challenges we are almost certain to cross the targeted figure of $12.1 billion for the year."
He said that it is the age of economy and information technology, and the two countries should work hard in these fields and learn from the experiences of one another.