Jun 16: Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on Saturday said the government wanted to overcome the fiscal and Current Account Deficit (CAD) for stabilizing the economy.

Fiscal and current account deficits were huge challenges for the government, and needed to be resolved for perusing the policies for economic stability and putting the economy on growth trajectory, the advisor said while addressing a “Post Budget Conference 2019, Pakistan Back on Track” organized by the Institute of Charted Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) here.

“We got Rs 2.3 trillion fiscal deficits and zero growth on exports from previous government, while Rs 31000 billion loans borrowed from different side,'' he informed.

He said the government had inherited $20 billion Current Account Deficit while Rs 2000 billion would be required for debt servicing on foreign loans.

He said in this critical situation, “we want to go for economic stability and further more towards quality and inclusive growth for sustainable development”.

Hafeez said for perusing the goal of economic stability the government had taken few measure including arrangements of $ 9.2 billion from friend countries and $ 3.2 billion oil on differed payments from Saudi Arabia, including $ 1.1 billion from Islamic Development Bank.

All these efforts resulted in bringing down the CAD $ 7 billion in past few months.

He said, “we had no other option but to go for International Monetary Fund (IMF) to maintain the budget deficit.”

He informed that Asian development Bank (ADB) had also agreed to give $ 3 billion, which was a big success of the government. .

Hafeez said for economic stabilization “we need fiscal discipline and revenue mobilization to take tough decision for perusing our economic agenda.”

Now the revenue collection and austerity measure was priority of the government, where we need Rs 29000 billion for paying interest on loans, he added.

Hafeez said increasing growth was top priority of the government, adding, “we had given subsidy to energy sector and said it was duty of all to pay taxes to contribute in the national economy.”

He said through austerity measures the government had saved Rs 500 billion from civilian side and armed forces' budget was also frozen at previous years level.

Addressing the gathering, Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Shabbar Zaidi said the government had set ambitious revenue target for achieving goal of economic stabilization.

He said the country’s economy had potential to achieve the current revenue target set by the government.

He said the government would not extend the date for amnesty scheme and June 30th 2019 would be the last date for declaring the undeclared assets.

(APP)

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