Pakistan looks forward to continuing close cooperation with all our friends in the Commonwealth to focus on promoting sustainable and inclusive development through youth-led action.

This was stated by Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Munir Akram, while speaking at an event co-hosted by Pakistan and Commonwealth Secretariat on the margins of Economic and Social Council Youth Forum at UN Headquarters in New York.

He said Pakistan has a very active policy with regard to youth. He said "The Prime Minister Youth Program" launched in 2013 has been successful at honing skills and providing opportunities for the youth.

Ambassador Munir Akram said that a National Youth Employment Policy is being developed to identify two million direct job opportunities in key sectors. It is estimated that 73 billion rupees are spent each year on business and agricultural loan facilities.

He said this also supplements the distributions of laptops for the young entrepreneurs to enhance accessible communication operations.

The Pakistani Ambassador said the Green Youth Parliament, is another programme, which has created clubs across 137 public universities across the country.

Munir Akram expressed the hope that the Commonwealth Youth Program will promote not only cooperation amongst ourselves, but also cooperation in order to promote the SDGs and the Paris goals which is under consideration in multilateral organization such as the United Nations.