Pakistan is racing a demographic clock it is currently losing. The country's population could approach 400m by 2040, business leaders warned on Monday, and the economy will need sustained real growth of 6-7% a year to provide enough jobs, infrastructure and public services. At present rates, they cautioned, rapid population growth without a matching rise in output could deepen unemployment and poverty and strain education, health care and housing.
The warning came from the Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF). Its founder, Mian Shafqat Ali, argued that the country must move from short-term economic management to a long-term growth strategy capable of generating productive work for the millions of young people joining the labour force. Pakistan, he said, could not afford to persist with sluggish growth while its population kept swelling.
In Mr Ali's view, expansion of around 3-4% a year may offer temporary stability but cannot meaningfully lift living standards or create sufficient employment. Only growth of at least 6-7% in real terms, he said, would allow the state to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding citizenry for jobs, schooling, medical care and shelter.
The arithmetic behind the warning is stark. According to World Bank data cited by the business community, Pakistan's GDP stood at around $407.3bn in 2025, with income per person of roughly $1,596 and growth of 3.7%. If the population reaches 400m by 2040, the country would need an economy of about $640bn simply to keep per-capita income where it is today.
Raising prosperity would demand far more. The business leaders estimated that an economy of around $2trn would be required for per-capita income to reach $5,000 with a population of 400m. Lifting it to $6,000 would require output of roughly $2.4trn, nearly six times the current size of the economy.
Syed Mahmood Ghaznavi, another PIAF office-bearer, urged policymakers to treat the demographic challenge as a matter of economic planning rather than merely population control. A large young population, he argued, could become a powerful engine of growth if the country created the right conditions for investment, industrialisation and employment.
"We have to turn our young population into an economic asset by investing in skills, education and productive sectors," Mr Ghaznavi said. He called for a clear economic roadmap to 2040, with targets for exports, industrial output, investment, tax collection and productivity. Without new opportunities for the young, he warned, the demographic dividend could instead become a heavy burden.
Exports featured prominently in the business leaders' prescriptions. They called for a major expansion of export-oriented industries, arguing that a larger economy would require substantially higher foreign-exchange earnings if Pakistan is to avoid repeated bouts of external financing pressure.
They also stressed the need to draw in private investment. That, they said, would mean lowering the cost of doing business, improving the energy supply, simplifying regulations and ensuring consistency in policy, long-standing complaints among Pakistani industrialists.
Productivity, the group argued, matters as much as headcount. Merely enlarging the workforce will not deliver lasting gains in incomes unless each worker produces more. For a country whose growth has hovered well below the pace its demographics demand, the message from the business community was blunt: without a step change in ambition, the young population that could power Pakistan's economy may instead weigh it down.