ISLAMABAD: Sept 15: Interim Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar on Friday said there were some signs of economic recovery as things are starting to pick up to move in the positive direction .
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad with other federal ministers, Shamshad Akhtar said the interim set-up had inherited a number of challenges after coming into power and it was coping with them
Sher said that the government was trying to manage the country’s challenges prudently by controlling expenditures and enhancing revenue. She said the situation will improve through corrective measures.
The minister said that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is showing decline from May figures, down from 38 per cent to 27pc. She said this is a very important indicator that shows we have come out of difficulty,, hoping that there would be stability in prices going forward.
Akhtar said that the country’s productive sectors had also seen some improvement. “By productive sector, I mean the agriculture sector. In this agriculture sector, we hope that our results will be good: whether its got to do with major crops or minor crops. Improved agriculture results will also improve our growth prospects.”
She said that while some people complained about the difficulties being faced by industries, the government had examined the data which showed that there some improvement in some productive sectors.
The minister said that the services sector, which she described as being “vibrant” at the moment, was linked to all other sectors.
Talking about the central bank’s decision to maintain the key policy rate, Akhtar said that the move would also bring “improvement” as the cost of borrowing of industries would fall.
She said that the government had spoken to international donors. She said that she had spoken to the World Bank (WB) and the government was trying that the cumulative assistance comes up to $2 billion.
She said that the government and the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) were taking certain steps in this regard. She said that the economy would enter “self-sustaining growth” if issues relating to foreign direct investment were removed.
She said that the country’s foreign exchange reserves were “stable” even if they weren’t very high. “According to our outflow and inflow, it is quite stable in my view.”
She also commented on the government’s crackdown against exchange companies, saying that it had resulted in the rupee stabilising to “some extent”.
Energy minister, Muhammad Ali, told the press conference that the government has decided to stagger quarterly adjustments, spreading over three months in power bills to provide relief to consumers. Similar relief measures would also be provided in the payment of the base electricity tariff in Karachi.
He also noted that the government’s crackdown on electricity theft across the country was yielding good results.
Earlier this month, the interim set-up launched a “full force” crackdown against electricity theft across the country to tame multiplying technical and commercial losses being faced by the power distribution companies.
The decision was taken after hundreds of people across the country took to the streets against inflated electricity bills.
Mohammad Ali said: the billing has increased and we are seeing recovery as our collection has improved. This proves that power theft was prevalent in Pakistan over the past several years but attention wasn’t paid to it.”
He said the government crackdown would continue and a control room for this purpose had been established in the power division as well.
