Economic Survey silent on employment rate

F.P. Report

KARACHI: The Pakistan Economic Survey released Thursday did not contain data or figures related to several important segments and features of economy and one of the missing aspects is the job losses amid reduced economic activity.

It comes despite the fact that the country has witnessed massive job losses mainly in the large-scale manufacturing sector as the document mentions the expanded employed force – 67.25 million total – for the year 2020-21 but the remains silent in the case of next two – 2021-22 and 2022-23.

So the Economic Survey says unemployment rate fell to 6.3 per cent in 2020-2021 from 6.9pc in 2018-2019, but stops short explaining the state of affairs in the last two fiscal years.

It is important to note that the large-scale manufacturing has contracted by 8.1pc during the July-March 2023 period with the private sector credit is down by 80.4pc.

According to the Economic Survey, over 12.4 million Pakistanis have proceeded abroad for employment in over 50 countries through official procedures as of December 2022. More than 96pc of these registered workers are in the Gulf States like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In 2022, around 62pc (514,725) of Pakistanis workers moved to Saudi Arabia followed by UAE (15.5pc).

The reason behind this trend are the massive development projects in various Gulf States under Vision 2030 – which is expected to continue in the coming years.

Meanwhile, the Economic Survey also doesn’t provide any information about the production of important crops and data respect to fertilizers, seed, land utilization, under cultivation area, yield per hectare, credit disbursed by agencies and procurement/support prices of agricultural commodities. Same is the case with minerals, textile statistics and growth of selected industrial items.