Govt to be meticulous with policies for achieving GDP targets

Government of Pakistan is planning to set the GDP growth target at around 7 percent for the forthcoming fiscal year 2008-09 against the achieved 5.7 percent of the current fiscal year. Low growth of GDP, in this fiscal year, was largely due to decline in key sectors like agriculture; manufacturing sector; exports and foreign direct investment. In an exclusive interview with Fibre2fashion, Nasir Jamal Director General-Media Ministry of Finance, said, “Pakistan needs a sustained macroeconomic stability, financial discipline and consistent and transparent policies for achieving targets for the next fiscal. Efficient management and structural reforms introduced in the recent past have brought about healthy changes in almost all sectors of the economy. A major breakthrough has been achieved in managing the domestic and external debt”. Besides, Mr Nasir also affirmed that the Government has plans to provide relief to major industries from the ongoing inflation and policies will be adopted in the upcoming budget for the same purpose. Additionally, encouragement of industrial clusters, support for technology transfer and facilitation of import of power generating small units are some of the areas to be given priority in the budget. Fiscal and tax incentives for encouraging small medium enterprises (SMEs) will also be encompassed through increased allocation of credit for this sector. In the agriculture sector, measures will be taken to improve cotton production that would help ensure availability of raw cotton on reasonable rates for the ginning industry as well as for the textile industry to increase production and ensure enhanced exports of textile products.