Huma Arshad
Throughout the world creating jobs is one of the major challenges after COVID -19 when businesses are going down and people are suffering from the health crisis. According to the Harvard Business Review, in one of the articles, every big business will take almost seven years to again stand on its feet. Worldwide people are struggling with the change or with WFH (Work From Home) strategies. As problems are not stopping signs but are the guidelines. Following this rule, the world automatically or forcefully adopted new techniques and strategies to cope up with the economical and financial gap caused by the pandemic.
Pakistan being a third-world country with a lot of internal political instabilities, also faced an economic punch. Before COVID-19, Pakistan had a workforce of 55.7 million which has reduced to 35.7 million from 2020 to 2021. Employees lost their jobs and small entrepreneurs faced a great loss in their businesses. Pakistan is the fifth most populous country. So creating new opportunities in the form of jobs and small businesses became the major target of Imran Khan’s Government with the arrival of the Covid 19 pandemic. According to Finance Minister, Mr. Shukat Tarin, Pakistan is aiming to start big infrastructure projects up to 40% to yield more jobs and businesses. That will enhance economic productivity and stability.
The Government is giving main priority to creating employment for the youth of the country. National Youth Development Framework (NYDF) is one of the steps towards it. The NYDF is based on three major principles or 3 Es including Education, Employment, and Engagement. The Prime Minister ‘s Kamyab Jawan program is another milestone towards better job opportunities.KJP is a youth entrepreneurship program for young entrepreneurs between the age of 21-45 years and starts from 18 years for the IT sector. This programme is designed to offer subsidized financing via 21 commercial, Islamic, and SME banks under the guidance and supervision of the State Bank of Pakistan.
Directly from the State Bank of Pakistan a new system by the name of “ Raast” or ‘direct way” is started working by 2022. This programme is developed through a long association and collaboration between Pakistan Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the help of the World Bank, UK, and the United Nations.Raast has the vision of enhancing and promoting women in the main economy. Raast is a low-cost business model that will make digital payments more affordable and easy for consumers of different socio-economic backgrounds. This payment system is considered an integral part of the National Payment System Strategy as well as the National Financial Inclusion Strategy that is seeking to both enable the delivery of financial services digitally and also broaden the financial inclusion to 50% of the adult population. According to Mr. Shaukat Tarin, the Federal Government is going to spend 900 billion rupees for development expenditure in the coming year.
At this time of political chaos in our neighboring country Afghanistan and dealing with pandemic simultaneously; Pakistan is still working hard to make the ends meet when it comes to SMEs or creating new opportunities for employment in the country. According to NCOC Recently Pakistan has crossed the landmark of 50 million doses of different COVID vaccines since the country’s vaccination drive began this year in February. Which is a hopeful sign of working towards a better economy. “Healthy Pakistan means a Wealthy Pakistan.” On the other hand on an International level recently Italy shows its importance to its relation to Pakistan. Pakistan and Italy shook hands to enhance bilateral trade, economic ties of $ 5 Billion. Italian ambassador Mr. Andreas Ferrarese, in his recent visit to Pakistan, promised to help Pakistan to enhance the business–to–business contacts as well as trade relations between the two nations.
