ISLAMABAD: Sheikh Amir Waheed President, Muhammad Naveed Malik Senior Vice President and Nisar Mirza Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry have lauded the government move to get unanimous approval of the first ever National Water Policy from Council of Common Interests (CCI) in its last meeting as Pakistan was facing the problem of water scarcity and there was a dire need of such a policy to ensure water availability for sustainable economic development of the country.
They said that Pakistan was an agricultural country and growth of agriculture was dependent of sufficient water availability as the irrigation system of Pakistan was consuming 90 percent of available water. They said that over 60 percent of our exports were from agriculture products while this sector contributed about 20 percent to the GDP growth. Therefore, a national water policy was badly needed for smooth economic growth of the country.
ICCI Office Bearers said that population of Pakistan was rising rapidly and was expected to cross 221 million by 2025. They said to meet the food needs of rising population and promote exports, Pakistan needed to improve agricultural productivity and water availability was basic requirement to achieve this goal.
They said that the industry was currently using only 2% of the total water consumption which was expected to rise to three times by 2025. They said that hydropower was the cheapest and environmentally the cleanest source of generating electricity, but the present ratio of hydropower to thermal power generation in Pakistan was 28:72, which was almost the reverse of historic optimum of 70:30. They said that additional hydropower capacity was required to be developed to produce cheap electricity that would significantly bring down the cost of doing business for which water availability was key requirement.
Sheikh Amir Waheed said that national water policy envisaged many good plans to develop water reservoirs, ensure better water management and conservation. However, he said that the government should ensure full implementation of national water policy to achieve its desired goals so that by ensuring sufficient water availability, the country could be put on the path of sustainable economic growth.
