KARACHI: Economic & Financial Analyst, Ateeq Ur Rehman has said that the war between opposition and treasury benches has to come to an end, if not permanent at least temporarily, to combat with the given situation and in the better interest of the country and its masses who are not only suffering from Covid-19 but also from other economic disasters.
Business environment is a key prerequisite for the Economy to flourish, failing which unemployment and hunger will rise further.
IMF has projected Pakistan’s GDP growth rate at 1.5 percent for 2021 against negative 0.04 percent in 2020 whereas the State Bank of Pakistan has projected it as 3 percent that means IMF declared just half of it, which does not seems to be valid as per the other available economic growth forecasts, said Ateeq Ur Rehman.
He said that IMF’s growth forecast for GDP growth rate for few countries like China is 8.4 percent, Britain 5.3 percent, Germany 3.6 percent, USA 6.4 percent, Japan 3.3 percent looks appropriate but IMF expects India’s GDP to grow 12.5 percent in FY22 looks strange, owing to their tertiary sector of the economy has been badly hit by the pandemic and like us they have “Economic Disruptions ahead”, due to a very scary third wave of Covid-19.
Ateeq added that IMF’s projection for Fiscal Year 2021 in terms of import is $46.16 billion against exports $23.63 billion hence bringing a trade deficit of $22.53 billion and that is quite alarming. Pakistan exports achieved $25 billion mark in 2013, after that it never reached to such level.
Exports have to grow to $25 billion immediately and then $50 billion at the end of the current fiscal year.
The rising trend of imports shows a mounting growth due to import of raw material, wheat, sugar, fertiliser, cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, etc which is not good.
In developing countries one cannot compress the import but at least in our case we can improve our agriculture produce and stop importing them. The import of agriculture has added 6-7 billion dollars in our import bill.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021