Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Ministry of Finance says government’s macroeconomic adjustment and demand management policies for stabilization have started making an impact as visible in the moderate growth of 3.3% in fiscal year 2019.
In a statement issued here on Monday, the Ministry said a host of measures were introduced by the government to bring down inflation, jack up economic activities, strengthening of social security net, increase in employment opportunities and containment of fiscal and trade deficits.
The present government introduced a comprehensive set of economic and structural reforms and the impact of macroeconomic adjustment and demand management policies for stabilization are now visible.
It further stated that the rise in inflation was mainly due to delay in policy adjustments required during 2018.
The government also adopted prudent expenditure management and contractionary monetary policy to compress the aggregate demand.
To this effect, the State Bank of Pakistan raised the policy rate to 13.25% to arrest inflationary pressures.
The Finance Division pointed out that the media reports while referring to increase in prices did not take into consideration the major causes behind this rise.
The Finance Division further clarified that the government was making all efforts to control inflation by ensuring smooth supply of commodities, checking undue profiteering & hoarding and vigilant monitoring of prices both at federal and provincial level. To address the issue of severe macroeconomic instability and to put the economy on the path of sustained growth and stability, some tough immediate steps were required. The present government thus introduced a comprehensive set of economic and structural reforms.
The Finance Division also reminded that the ease of doing business was also improving at the fast pace, as in 06 indicators out of 10, there was significant improvement in Pakistan and the World Bank had placed Pakistan in top 20 best performers in ease of doing business. Pakistan follows liberal investment regime for investors’ confidence and conducive environment to attract local and foreign investment. During September FY 2020, the FDI recorded at US $ 385.3 million showing an increase of 75.6 percent as against US $ 182.1 million during the same month last year.
