Klaus Schwab: Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, friends, it is my great
pleasure and honor to welcome Your Excellency Asif Ali Zardari, president of
Pakistan, to the World Economic Forum Special Meeting on Economic Growth and Job
Creation in the Arab World.
Mr. President, particularly in the midst of today's challenges, global challenges,
national challenges, it's a great privilege that you join us at this
meeting, focused on fostering regional economic stability and growth,
employment, education, and entrepreneurship. Pakistan possesses great potential for
future growth. While its geographic location provides
access to two of the fastest growing and largest markets of the world,
Pakistan's own domestic market also holds an immense possibility with the world's sixth largest
population of 187 million, which is also very young, with the median age at less
than 22 years old. In fact, your government's recent
announcement, Mr. President, to liberalize the bilateral trade relations with India
signals the importance of collaborative power not only on a regional basis but
also, it's a good signal in the global context. Yet today, Pakistan faces many challenges.
Years of economic stagnation coupled with high inflation remains a major roadblock
to prosperity, while last year's devastating flood has destroyed a large
portion of an already strained infrastructure. While I'm pleased to mention that
Pakistan has moved up in the ranking of the World Economic Forum's Global
Competitiveness Index this year, the report also highlights the need for
strengthening the country's institutions and for improving general health and education.
Mr. President, worse than ever, not only here in Jordan, but indeed, the world
looks at Pakistan. It looks at Pakistan to help, to confront
the new realities in which we live for shared peace and prosperity, for mutual
respect, steering across towards long-term stability not only among governments but
among all people. With this in mind, we all look very much
forward to hearing from you how you see the role of Pakistan in shaping the future.
Mr. President, welcome to the stage here. Asif Ali Zardari: Thank you.
[Applause]
Asif Ali Zardari: Thank you, Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen,
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim As-Salamu Alaykum.
Indeed, Pakistan is blessed with its natural location and geo-strategic position.
We do happen to be on the fault line of the world and the world has seen Pakistan
suffer not just the changes in climate, which some of you may or may not know that
Pakistan happens to have the seven largest peaks in the world.
That means we have the Glaciers that will be affected by international environmental
effects, and therefore, the floods last year and in fact even this year.
In spite of that, we are a resilient nation and we have a road map for the
future, and the road map entails we being the shortest route to all the energy
corridors of the world to the two largest economies, as you just met, of the future.
And the future, as some people would have it and the world would describe, is going
to be an Asia world. In order to be an Asia world, our belief
is that Pakistan is the force multiplier which is needed to all the regions and the
regional countries to come up to the position of what their desires or the
world desires of them to be an economic giant, whether it's India or China or
other nations. So it has a great future in energy corridors.
The world is talking about the Silk Route that again today leads from Pakistan
and the Pakistan ports and onwards to energy-starved nations and energy-rich
nations which are landlocked and blocked. If you look at the China Sea and the
Arabian Ocean, you look at half of the Indian cities and half of the Indian
markets, half of the Chinese markets, our ports are closer to them than their own
ports are.
So taking this in mind, the population growth not very long ago, the world
thought the Chinese population was its biggest curse.
Today, we all know that Chinese population is the engine that drives their economy.
So the population growth and especially with us where we have 65 percent of our
population is the young of tomorrow and these are going to be the engines of
growth for the world, where the world economies that are doing better for
itself, like India and the brain drain that happened in the last decade is now
going back. The workforce is going back to India.
There is a vacuum in the world which I hope that our younger generation will fill.
And the women emancipation, the education, and the world becoming in fact
a village more so today than it was yesterday, with tomorrow's technology at
the tips of hands of every young student and it's becoming a global world.
And indeed, it is producing global individuals very soon and I hope sooner
than later where people will become universal citizens.
In the universal citizenship, Pakistan has a role to play.
Pakistan has a future and therein lies our strength.
Even today, our revenue, half of it comes from the workforce that we export abroad.
We have managed in Pakistan and we believe in converting all adversities into opportunities.
The flood that you talk about, Your Excellency, last year, or even before,
the war that is going on against a mindset, we have taken all of these and converted them
into opportunities. We have managed to make a population count.
We have brought in the women of all the IDPs.
By IDPs, I mean internally displaced people. Because then we were starting the war
towards or started the war in --, we ourselves did not realize what the
effects would be.
From it came the population migration of people and citizens.
When we got these women and boys and kids and children in the camps, we immunized them.
We documented them. And those women are now recipients of
a program which is named after my late wife, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto,
called Benazir Card in which we empower women only. The women of the household, of the
poorest of the poor get a certain stipend. And further on, we've put other products
on that highway by making that card a tool of interaction.
We have given telephones so they can get that money on their phones.
So not only are we giving the women a little subsidy to their household;
we are also giving them a voice and communication. So all of them, and it just so happened
that when this program was introduced, the first recipient of this program was a lady
and we documented it because now modern technology is what is supposed to guide
the future. And in that, the first recipient was
a lady and she did not disburse all her money. We were giving them X amount of money on
a card which we had for especially affected people of IDPs.
And she withdrew only the amount she needed so that gave us the signal that
this is what the world is all about: whether you are educated or whether you
are not, you do understand the necessity of tools to be used.
So all this is indeed the strength of Pakistan and we intend to use it for the
future for the world to be a better place, for Pakistan to be a responsible country,
and be able to export and be in place when the world needs because half the
population of the world is in the minus. Half the population of the world
is working on different fields. It is easier for us to produce
and cheaper for us to produce doctors, for example, than it is anywhere else in the world.
And we have the homegrown universities
which are now old enough to be mature enough to produce doctors and nurses
and future scientists if you may have. So that is one aspect of Pakistan.
Klaus Schwab: Mr. President, thank you for describing the economic potential.
I think you have a country with great people, great minds.
You described it and we all know it. I mean we meet in our travels around the
world always. Pakistanis are characterized by
extraordinary potential. Now, let me just ask you one question,
if I switch from the economics more to the political situation.
Pakistan is a very important country in terms of global stability.
And of course, very often, Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, is criticized for its
role inside the global context. Can you just tell us in a short minute
how you see the positioning of Pakistan in contributing to global peace and stability?
Asif Ali Zardari: Let me remind the world that we, at the moment,
Pakistan, contribute the largest contingent of soldiers to the UN Peace Force.
And therefore, our population and our position on that is that is a signal to
the world that we can help wherever there is trouble.
Second of all, yes, like I said, our geo-strategic position where economically
it is very vibrant and has a future, it has a past also and the past happens to be
the fault line of the empires. Afghanistan is rightly known as the
graveyard of empires and it has always been the fault line.
That is where the Soviets lost. From Alexander to the Soviets,
everybody lost their systems.
Today, we are wrongly categorized. We are in fact the victims of terror.
I myself am personally the victim of that terror and I don't even qualify it as terror.
I call it war of mindset. My wife, as you know and all remember,
the late Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, she was the leader and she was going to be
the Prime Minister. In her name, now we have a prime minister
and we have taken the presidency, and democracy is finding its place and taking root.
So before the Arab Spring, before anything else could happen, I have also
given away the powers that were taken away by the Parliament to the presidency by a dictator.
Those have been transferred back to the Parliament.
So democracy is taking its place and finding its place incidents, and I was
just talking to you, Professor, when I spoke, came before, that individuals or
individual groups should not -- nations should not be hosted to their agenda.
For example, even 9/11 per se, the world fell victim to and hostage to a mindset
which we're looking for the reaction, not the action.
The action is one thing; the reaction is what one has to worry about.
And I feel that the world, ג€˜til to date, is still caught up in the recession world.
There is still economical unease in the world because of the reaction to that
action of 9/11. In the same instance, in Pakistan, we are
hoping and fighting against forces which are supported by a war weapon which was
created in the world before our time called heroin.
Now, while growing up and remembering and knowing the peace era, which is known as
the flower children, we knew about drugs in our region but heroin was introduced as
a war weapon. Unfortunately, it's still, to date,
is not part of the NATO charter. But it does start from my backyard
and from our neighboring country. And the NATO does not take responsibility
for it. And by some experts, it's more than $10
billion to $12 billion and you can increase the figure as you go around the world.
So there is a huge interest group again of the people who trade in this war
weapon, and that is -- their budget is even larger than my armed forces' budget.
So this is one factor. Among other political factors of the
neighborhood and the remnants of the Second World War and the Cold War and the
Soviet nations and today Russia and then the other countries, so it's all the
remnants of a last world order which has not been able to transform itself into the
new world order or today's world order, which, like somebody described today,
was totally different. It is not the capitalism but it
is talking about ideas and talking about innovative ideas.
Klaus Schwab: Talentism. Asif Ali Zardari: Talentism.
Klaus Schwab: Yes. Asif Ali Zardari: That's it.
Klaus Schwab: Mr. President, we are all together in the same boat in fighting
terrorism, and you reminded us that you personally suffered from terrorism in
probably the severest way. So we were very fortunate to have you
here to hear your reassuring words. Pakistan has a potential.
And on behalf of the participants, I want to thank you again for joining us because
Pakistan is an important neighbor. It's part of this region in the wider
area, and you can be assured, at least I'm speaking here on behalf of the World
Economic Forum, that it will have all our support in creating a future for such
a large population of nearly 200 million people.
So all our best wishes and thank you again, Mr.
President. Asif Ali Zardari: Thank you again. Thank you very much.