Pakistan has suffered huge losses of more than 67.93 billion U.S. dollars during last ten years since the country has joined the international coalition against terrorism in late 2001, officials data shows.
Besides economic losses, more than 35,000 citizens and 3,500 security personnel have been killed in fighting with the militants and suicide attacks and bomb blasts, according to official figures.
Pakistan launched first major offensive in Waziristan tribal region against the Taliban and al-Qaida militants, who had fled U. S. military operation in Afghanistan.
In retaliation Pakistani Taliban militants started attacks on the Pakistani security personnel first in the tribal regions and later they sneaked into cities.
The war has spread like a contagion into settled areas of Pakistan that has so far cost the country destruction of infrastructure, internal migration of millions of people from parts of northwestern Pakistan, erosion of investment climate, nose-diving of production and growing unemployment, an official document says.
Above all the terror war also brought economic activity to a virtual standstill in many part of the country.
A large portion of resources, both men and material are being consumed by this war for the last several years and the economy was subjected to enormous direct and indirect costs which continued to rise from 2.669 billion dollars in 2001-2002 to 13.6 billion dollars by 2009-2010.
The sources said as a result of war in Afghanistan the Western countries including the United States continued to impose travel ban for their citizen (investor, importers etc.) to visit Pakistan.
This affected Pakistan's exports, prevented the inflows of foreign investment, affected the pace of privatization program, reduced import demand, reduced tax collection and expenditure over- run on additional security spending.
Domestic tourism industry also suffered badly, hundreds and thousands of jobs could have been created had economic activity not slowed as well as thousands of jobs were lost because of the destruction of tourism industry.
Investment-to-GDP ratio has also nosedived from 22.5 percent in 2006-2007 to 13.4 percent in 2010-2011 with serious consequences for job creating ability of the economy.
Officials say that Pakistan needs enormous resources to enhance productive capacity of the economy. The security situation will be the key determinant of the future flow of the investment, they argue.
Editor: Yang Lina
English.news.cn 2011-06-29 21:48:14 FeedbackPrintRSS
ISLAMABAD, June 29 (Xinhua)
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