Education is considered to have a strong correlation with social and economic development but the budgetary allocation for education in Pakistan is on the decline.

Pakistan’s dire state of education sector demanded immediate attention from the government, without doubling its education budget, Pakistan could not address the numerous challenges, Mahfooz Elahi, President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has stated this in a statement.

He was of the view that in Pakistan the budget allocated to education was very low. He said that Pakistan was now on just twelve countries that spend less than 2 percent of GDP on education, although education enjoyed the highest priority on the social sector agenda, which as a whole was poorly funded when compared to defence, general administration and debt servicing.

ICCI President referred to a report, its mentioned that  the education allocations of some countries as per their GDPs; Cuba 18.7 percent of GDP, Brunei 9.1 percent, Iran 4.9 percent, Sweden 7.7 percent, UK 5.3 percent, US 5.7 percent, Malaysia 8.1 percent, Yemen 9.5 percent, India about 6 percent and Pakistan allocated only 1.9 percent of GDP for education sector. He urged the government to increase the education budget by at least 4 percent of GDP in upcoming budget.

He said that labor force needs to be educated and capacity building programs must be launched for their effective and productive role in the national economy.

In order to move towards knowledge-base economy, government must allocate substantial amount of budget to education sector which would bring rapid change in the economic development of the country, he maintained.

ICCI President said that by allocating more funds for education sector human capital could be improved which would ultimately accelerate the pace of economic growth.