New Delhi, March 1 (IANS) Pakistan will either confront deep structural weaknesses such as tax narrowness, energy inefficiency, and elite capture of its government or face a brittle economy and thinner social cohesion by 2031, a new report has said.
The report from Business Recorder said half‑hearted reforms could leave average annual GDP growth hovering around 2–3 per cent over the next five years, barely above population growth, amounting to stagnation, the report said.
“Stagnation, in a young country with budding youths, is combustible,” the report said, adding the next five years will reveal whether the young population is a dividend or a destabilizer.
“If employment remains fragile, outward migration will accelerate. Remittances may temporarily cushion the economy, but brain drain will quietly hollow out domestic capacity,” the report noted.
Pakistan’s horoscope for 2026–2031 would be written in “debt ledgers, inflation charts and poverty lines,” the report said, warning of slow growth and inflation eroding household budgets.
Analysts said that stabilisation programmes and IMF support can only buy time but cannot generate sustained growth, and lack of decisive action from the government will lead employment to remain concentrated in informal, low‑productivity services.
Growth could recover to 4–5 per cent by 2029–30 through tax reform, digitised revenue collection, and export-oriented reforms, which could reduce poverty marginally, it said.
The report said the state’s core failure over decades has been the absence of political will to expand the tax net and reduce elite capture. “Each external shock—oil price spikes, climate disasters, geopolitical tensions—will push the system back toward emergency financing,” it warned.
Another recent report has said that Pakistan only spends around 1.9 per cent of GDP on education, well below the internationally recommended 4 to 6 per cent, and about 26.2 million children remain out of school. Curricula offer limited exposure to digital skills, critical thinking and applied learning, leaving the workforce ill‑prepared for technological change.
The report cited surveys saying 64 per cent of graduates face employment difficulties due to skill gaps, while graduate unemployment among youth is estimated at around 31 per cent.
–IANS
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