ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said that unchecked population growth and worsening climate impacts are the two biggest challenges preventing Pakistan from achieving its goal of becoming a $3 trillion economy.
Speaking on Geo News’ Capital Talk on Wednesday, the minister said both issues posed existential risks to the country’s economic ambitions. “If we don’t tackle them correctly, these two factors — climate change and population growth — can derail us from our $3 trillion target,” he warned.
Critical inadequacies in Pakistan’s environmental oversight were highlighted on Wednesday, after a parliamentary committee heard that emission standards remain frozen at Euro-II levels, a benchmark long-abandoned by most nations.https://t.co/PHCxE3MX8M
— Dawn.com (@dawn_com) October 23, 2025
Pakistan’s population now exceeds 251 million, growing at about 2.55 per cent annually, while nearly 45 per cent of citizens live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. Simultaneously, Pakistan was ranked among the most climate-vulnerable countries in the Global Climate Risk Index 2025.
Mr Aurangzeb said the impacts of climate change were no longer abstract, citing floods and worsening smog in Lahore as examples of recurring crises. He noted that the damage from recent floods — 80 per cent of which occurred in Punjab — had significantly hit the agriculture sector, particularly rice and cotton crops, reducing growth projections by 0.4–0.5 percentage points from the target of 4.2pc.
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He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had directed Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik to formulate a 300-day action plan to address environmental and adaptation challenges.
Addressing the exit of multinational companies from Pakistan, the finance minister said such decisions were part of global corporate strategies, noting that while some firms had left, others — including Aramco — had entered the market in recent years.
Separately, former finance minister Miftah Ismail said economic stability without structural reforms had stalled growth, arguing that high taxes, energy costs, and government overreach continued to discourage investment and private-sector expansion.
