THE economic situation is bad, with horrific stories of people in despair hitting the headlines every other day. The number of unemployed cannot be allowed to swell.

There is a need to initiate new infrastructure projects and inject fresh investment in services, agriculture and industry to absorb the ever-growing pool of young men, joined in by not-so-young recently retrenched workers, looking for gainful employment.

As the world reels under the impact of financial crisis enveloping all sectors and countries as far as India, Russia, Japan and China from its epic centre in the US, the working masses are at the loosing end. The number of jobless is rising everywhere as world leaders, collectively and individually, struggle to put brakes on the economic slide.

There are clear indicators of slow down in the economy as investment levels drop and industry readjusts to shrinking market. While avenues of new jobs narrow down, according to one estimate, more than 25,000 people have been sacked from different sectors over the last three months alone. Beside brokerage houses and aligned financial services sector, media houses, auto makers and vendors, pharmaceuticals and textiles are said to be actively readjusting to save their businesses by becoming leaner.

However, unlike the industrialised West, where the social security nets save people falling below a certain level, in Pakistan and other such countries, unemployment could threaten the very livelihood of workers and their dependents. A sharp increase in unemployment could, therefore, lead to chaos in an already volatile security situation.

The million dollar question, however, is: Will the investment come now if it has been slack over the past about two years for a variety of reasons? A related question is: Who will make this much needed investment -- the government, the private sector or the foreign investor?

There were too many ifs and buts coming in way of direct clear cut answers to these two pertinent questions. What one gathered from talking to some influential people and economists is that there exists a possibility that the economic situation finally starts improving early next year provided the balance of payment worries are put at rest, the world oil prices stay steady and agriculture turns in good cotton and wheat crops.

The private sector will have to be facilitated to respond to the investment needs as the government has neither the resources nor the expertise to answer the call. The lead will have to come from domestic investors and it would only be the success of local investors that can lure potential foreign investors. The investor in the West seems to be preoccupied for the time being in sorting out issues thrown up by the current crisis before taking interest in overseas investment. There is some hope in the Middle East brimming with petrodollars.

“Every crisis also offers an opportunity. We are not the only ones in stress. The whole world is struggling to contain the impact of the current crisis. Our competitors in the world market are also trapped in their own situations which may lead to readjustment in relative market share in the textile business in the West. This offer us a great opportunity to not only to reclaim lost share but penetrate in new markets and categories of textiles”, Iqbal Ibrahim, chairman All Pakistan Textile Mills Association, told Dawn from Lahore on telephone.

“I told Mr Tareen, You give us 15 million bales of cotton crop and I promise you $20 billion exports”, he said encouraged by shipments of certain textile categories.

He said employment issue can be addressed and private sector can meet the challenge if right set of policies are set in place to facilitate investors. He felt the government should focus on better governance and let the private sector take care of business and investment.

“I am hopeful. Things will start looking up the moment right set of policies are put in place, the cost of doing business is rationalised and infrastructural bottlenecks are removed”, Chaudhry Mohammad Saeed, ex president of FPCCI told Dawn on telephone from Mirpur, Azad Kashmir.

Minister for Manpower Syed Khursheed Shah told Dawn from Islamabad over telephone that his party’s public image is that of job provider and it will do all in its means to justify that image. “We came to power on promise of providing job security and the government is alive and is currently planning to meet the challenge head on”.

The minister said the PPP government had decided to focus on housing and agriculture as both are labour intensive and have great backward and forward linkages that can re-launch several sectors. “We are in the process of finalising low cost housing schemes at the district level to address the shelter needs and create employment opportunities”.

“The government it seems will have to assume the leading role to diffuse the ticking unemployment bomb. It is its responsibility and political compulsion to put the issue on the top of its agenda. The worsening economic situation demands that the political hierarchy put off its foreign trips for the next six months and concentrate on evolving a strategy to create conditions to absorb the human resources in a productive fashion for capital formation in Pakistan”, an analyst said.

The problem of unemployment has assumed a proportion where some tiny Rozgar scheme or other one-off initiative might not be enough. “A piecemeal approach will not help. A well co-ordinated comprehensive plan to absorb the valuable human resources needs to be prepared with big schemes facilitating self-employment to be able to deal with rising joblessness.”

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