FAISALABAD    -  Engineer Ahmad Hassan, former vice president and Convener FCCI (Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry) Standing Committee on R&D, has proposed a separate and dedicated ministry to produce high­ly skilled human resources which could be exported to other coun­tries to almost double the existing foreign remittances.

Addressing a meeting of the standing committee, he said that our current exports are only $20b while remittances are $30b but still there is a gap of $20-25b. He said, “We must focus on exporting high­ly skilled manpower to overcome this trade gap. The economy is fac­ing multiple challenges and funda­mental administrative changes are needed to resolve the issues. We are exporting unskilled and semiskilled workers which are sending $30b remittances. The proposed minis­try may be tasked with identifying the specific needs of each potential country and produce human re­sources in that particular area.” He further said that exports are dwin­dling due to global meltdown and internal instability, hence we must focus on enhancing foreign remit­tances by exporting a major chunk of our highly trained manpower. “It is the easiest way to balance the trade deficit”, he added. Earlier, Dr H.M Arif Javaid presented a compre­hensive documentary on remittanc­es and said that foreign remittances of $647b were transferred globally during 2022 and this amount is ex­pected to jump to $800b in 2024.

He explained data about South Asian countries and said that maxi­mum remittances poured in India which was $111.2b. “Pakistan re­ceived $29.9b remittances which were only 7.9% of our GDP”, he said and explained the importance of foreign remittances, global and regional trends, South Asian land­scape, Pakistani diaspora, remit­tances sent by them, evolution of remittances and other related top­ics. Muhammad Amjad Khawaja proposed that comparative study of the Pakistan and Bangladesh textile sector may be presented in the next meeting of the standing committee. The meeting was also attended by Abdullah Qadri, Muhib Mujtaba Amjad, Muhammad Irfan and Muhammad Faizan.