Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal Friday inaugurated 'Rising Pakistan' campaign to highlight positive image of the country internationally. Talking to media, the minister said the main aim to launch 'Rising Pakistan' campaign is to highlight the culture of all provinces and project the soft image of Pakistan.
The minister said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has steered Pakistan out of the crisis as the country was enduring 16 to 20 hours daily load-shedding in 2013 when the current government assumed power. He said now after 4.5 years, the country's economy is being ranked among the five top growing economies of the world.
Ahsan Iqbal said the worst power outages had jeopardized the whole system of the country. He said industrial production remained at the lowest level but the PML-N government started strenuous efforts to revive the economy.
Owing to various steps taken by the new government in 2013 onwards, he said, the country's growth ratio was started registering marked increase. He claimed that economic growth rate has increased by 6 percent in financial year 2017-18 which was only 3.7 percent in 2013.
The planning and development minister said 11,000MW additional electricity had been added to the national grid system in the last four-and-a-half-year. Whereas, he said, only 17,000MW electricity was produced in last 66 years.
In addition, the minister further claimed that overall 60 percent increase has been ensured in the network of motorways and highways in last four-and-a-half-year, adding terrorism incidents had been decreased up to 75 percent during the tenure of PML-N. Ahsan Iqbal said peace has been restored in Karachi while Balochistan has been brought back into the national mainstream.