ISLAMABAD   -   Minister for Planning and Development, Ahsan Iqbal Saturday said that the country’s economic direction could be set on the right path by all parties collectively.

The country’s economic situation is not good at present and not a single leader, single political party and a single institution can overcome the prevailing situation alone, the minister said while addressing a round table conference on Digital Pakistan here. He said that Pakistan needed a collaborating efforts and everyone should participate in the country’s development process. He said that in today’s world, digital revolution had penetrated into every department creating revolution in across the world. He said in the previous PML-N government, the university students were provided laptops free of charge to adapt them according to the new emerging technology.

When we started providing laptops to the students, we laid foundation of the IT revolution in the country as the laptop scheme was aimed at empowering youth digitally, he expressed.

He  said more than one million laptops were provided to the youth that helped creating a new class in IT entrepreneurship. He said that due to the scheme, free lancing in Pakistan developed rapidly and today the beneficiary individuals were earning hundreds of thousands of rupees monthly. Similarly through Higher Education Commission (HEC), Ahsan Iqbal said the government made special funding for the the youth and every university was asked to develop incubation center so that the start up culture should be developed among the youth to enable them start their own businesses. The minister said that he had tasked the HEC to arrange a round table conference to develop a special curriculum for universities that should be aligned with the industrial sector’s requirements.

The minister said that in 2017, he started four national centers of excellence in big data cloud computing, artificial intelligence, cyber security, automation robotic and applied mathematics. He said that the government was focusing on private sector which would be given opportunities to flourish their businesses. In the up coming Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), he said that the government would develop a special fund under which e-government projects would be financed.