Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Pakistan is embarked upon a sustainable and inclusive growth and all the economic indicators and recent developments signify the strength and reliability of overall economic performance of the government in reinvigorating the economy, spurring growth, maintaining price stability, providing jobs to the youth and rebuilding key infrastructure of the country.
“The Government is committed to correcting fundamentals of the economy through effective policy making and targeted reforms with an aim to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth trajectory,” says a detailed statement issued by the Ministry of Finance to coincide with the Independence Day of Pakistan.
The present government started its journey with economic vision of getting sustainable economic growth through improving efficiency, enhancing productivity and increasing investment. In this regard, a comprehensive agenda of economic reforms has been initiated through structural reforms rather than taking the usual route of pricing and fiscal adjustments.
The measures are focused on establishing and strengthening the economy which is not only self-reliant but also capable of competing globally. At the start of the fiscal year 2020, the economy started to observe a remarkable turnaround endorsing the government timely and much-needed policy actions requisite for addressing macroeconomic imbalances.
Resultantly, the economy started moving progressively towards sustainable and inclusive growth. The measures paid off in terms of improved external and fiscal accounts, stability in exchange market, growing investor confidence, tame down inflation.
Thus, resulting in controlling twin deficits indicated that the economy has started moving towards sustainable growth. The external sector has been stabilized as the current account deficit narrowed by 77.9 percent during FY2020.
Pakistan’s exports were performing better till February 2020 than most of its competitors despite the challenging external environment. Remittances increased to a historic high level of $ 23.1 billion as compared to $ 21.7 billion last year, with a growth of 6.4 percent. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) increased by 88 percent and reached to $ 2.6 billion during FY2020 as compared to $ 1.4 billion in FY2019. To further strengthen the external sector, the second phase of the Pak-China Free Trade Agreement was implemented.
This will provide an opportunity to Pakistani manufacturers and traders to export around 313 new products to the Chinese market on zero duty. In addition, National Tariff policy has been approved to remove anomalies in import duties structure which will be used as an instrument to catalyze industrial production for enhancing exports. Similarly, the E-Commerce policy has also been approved with vision of creating business friendly environment for holistic growth in all sectors especially E-commerce across the country.
