More than 400,000 new job opportunities will be created in current fiscal year in agriculture, small and medium enterprises, housing and construction, information and communication technology and export sectors with the investment of Rs 435 billion, approximately.
Officials in labour department told Business Recorder here on Friday that Islamabad was seriously considering to invest large amount in said sectors, aimed to create new job opportunities across country, which would be almost 60 percent higher than the allocation made in the preceding years.
"These sectors have potential for a fairly diversified employment generation through direct and indirect ways and hopefully they would be identified as 'labour incentive sectors' for workers, they hoped.
According to Labour Force Surveys (LFSs), around 4.94 million additional work opportunities have been created in the last two years by government, intended to reduce the upward trend in unemployment rate, which skyrocketed in last few years.
Although unemployment rate has declined and stood at 6.2 percent, which was 8.3 percent during last two years, government is adopting fresh strategies to reduce unemployment rate further in current FY, they added.
Officials said that Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) 2005-10 and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) had been prepared in line with these developments, which would create a sustainable economic system besides reducing the poverty across country and hoped that these strategies would achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
Moreover, they hope that it would help enhance competitiveness in these sectors, besides maximising the knowledge and skills of workers, which would directly, be effective on the Total Factor Productivity (TFP).
The Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is being increased in both genders in urban and rural areas, respectively. Despite the fact that females are helping their families out of poverty-circle and stabilising them economically, they said that Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) in females were phenomenal in last few years, which was about one fourth in rural areas and around one out of every ten women were active in the labour market, they informed.
It may be mentioned that unemployment rate had shot up to 33 percent of overall population, which was around 45 million people living below poverty line because of unemployment, however, 70 percent of them was young blood and living in rural areas, sources revealed as per independent survey report.