London: Pakistan’s predicted annual growth rate over the next 10 years is nearly 6 percent, according to the revised growth projections presented by researchers at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University.
This is 1 percent GDP increase in a year. In Harvard CID’s earlier projections, Pakistan GDP was set to grow at 5 percent by 2025.
Although China is a huge-sized economy (current GDP at $12 trillion) and cannot be compared with Pakistan (current GDP at $300 billion), Pakistan’s 5.97 percent growth rate is higher than China’s, which is set to grow by 4.41 percent.
CID’s growth projections are based on measures of each country’s economic complexity, which capture the diversity and sophistication of the productive capabilities embedded in its exports and the ease with which it could further diversify by expanding those capabilities.
Led by Harvard Kennedy School professor, the research is called The Atlas of Economic Complexity. CID claims that the economic complexity not only describes why countries are rich or poor today, but can also predict future growth, about five times more accurately than the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index. Pakistan’s giant neighbour India is predicted to grow by 7.72 percent, the world’s highest.
CID believes that the economic pole of global growth has moved over the past few years from China to neighbouring India. It is likely to stay there over the coming decade.
Except for India, Pakistan will beat all Asian economies in GDP growth. These include today’s giant Muslim economies as well.
