June 11, 2022 (MLN): The weekly economic roundup summarizes the country's key economic and financial data for the week from various sectors to keep an eye on next week's trends.

• Aiming at containing twin deficits, Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Mr. Miftah Ismail in his budget speech has set a GDP growth target of 5% for FY23 to Rs78 trillion.
• The government on Friday proposed rationalization of custom duty in the Federal Budget 2022-23 to provide relief to different sectors, including the packaging industry and agriculture.
• The government has allocated Rs10.129 billion for the completion of 29 ongoing and to start 04 new agriculture sector uplift projects under its Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for the fiscal year 2022-23 for ensuring food safety and security in the country.
• The federal government will spend around Rs1.66 billion on eight projects of the Finance Division under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) during the financial year 2022-23.
• The federal government will spend around Rs3.18 billion on 19 projects of revenue under Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) during the upcoming financial year 2022-23.
• The government has allocated around Rs 2.1 billion for Information and Broadcasting Division in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the year 2022-2023 for five ongoing and 12 new projects.
• The government on Friday earmarked over Rs 2.484 billion under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP 2022-23) for 10 ongoing and 5 new schemes to ensure improved services in the aviation sector.
• The government in its Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) 2022-23 has allocated Rs2.85 billion for different development projects of the Ministry of Industries and Production.
• The Federal Government has allocated an amount of Rs2.23 billion for five ongoing and as many new schemes of the Defence Division under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the Fiscal Year 2022-23.
• The Weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the Combined Group increased by 2.67% during the week ended Jun 09, 2022 while the SPI increased by 23.98% compared to the corresponding period from last year.
• Workers' remittances have continued to remain above the $2 billion mark since June 2020. However, in terms of growth, remittances decreased by 25.4 percent on an MoM basis and 6.9 percent on a YoY basis, largely reflecting the usual seasonal post-Eid decline and associated long holidays.
• The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors on Friday approved $300 million in financing to support Pakistan in upgrading rural roads to provide safe and reliable access to schools, health facilities and markets in the most vulnerable districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.
• Sazgar Engineering Works Limited (SAZEW) sold 1,173 units of Auto Rickshaw during the month of May 2022, which was around 29% higher than the sales of 910 units made in the previous month.
• The total liquid foreign exchange reserves held by the country dropped by $595 million or 3.8% WoW to stand at the lowest level of $15.18 billion since Oct 25, 2019, during the week ended on June 3, 2022, compared to $15.77bn in the previous week.
• The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has approved a massive increase of Rs7.82 per unit in the electricity tariffs for K-Electric consumers.
• Moody’s Investors Service on Wednesday affirmed the B3 long-term deposit ratings of Pakistan’s top five banks and changed the outlook on the bank's long-term deposit ratings to negative from stable.
• Cement despatches declined by 16 percent YoY and 6 percent MoM to 3.3mn tons in May 2022.
• The Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) index was recorded at 95.85 in April 2022, showing a drop of 0.84% compared to 96.66 in March 2022.
• Foreign exchange inflows through Roshan Digital Account (RDA) have reached $4.4 billion by May 2022 since its launch in September 2020.
• The cumulative outflows from the National Savings Schemes (NSS) in 10MFY22 were recorded at Rs236 billion, mainly due to the restrictions imposed on financial institutions to invest in these schemes.
• The total debt of the central government rose to Rs43.7 trillion in April 2022, registering an increase of Rs5tr or 12.91% during the first ten months of the current fiscal year when compared to Rs38.70 reported in June 2021.
• Pakistan has moved six points up in the International Travel and Tourism Development Index as per the report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on Thursday unveiled the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2021-22, which revealed that Pakistan’s economy grew at the rate of 5.97% in FY22 against the target of 4.8% in the outgoing fiscal year.

The highlights of the Pakistan Economic Survey 2021-22 are as follows:

• The country has imported oil worth $17.03 billion during the first 10 months from July to April of the current fiscal year 2021-22 to meet its energy needs, witnessing an almost 95 percent increase in the oil import bill as compared to the same period of the last year.
• The agriculture sector in the country during the fiscal year 2021-22 grew by 4.40 percent as against the set targets of 3.5 percent and last year’s growth of 3.48 percent.
• The fiscal deficit increased to 3.8 percent of GDP and was recorded at Rs 2,565.6 billion during July-March FY2022 against 3.0 percent of GDP (Rs 1,652.0 billion) in the same period of last year.
• The country's total electricity generation capacity has increased by 11.5 percent during July-April 2022 and stood at 41,557 MW from 37261 MW during July-April 2022 as compared to last fiscal year 2020-21.
• During July-March FY2022, Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) staged growth of 10.4 percent against 4.24 percent growth in the corresponding period last year.
• The government’s borrowing for budgetary support increased to Rs1,765.2 billion during the period July 1 to May 20, FY2022 as compared to Rs 642.6 billion during the same period last year.

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