ISLAMABAD, Jun 26 (APP):Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar Friday said number spinning in macroeconomic indicators in a bid to show misleading performance was the hallmark of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government.
Addressing in the National Assembly, he said the PML-N leaders were applying the same formula to malign the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government and misleading the nation.
Responding to former commerce minister Khurrum Dastgir’s speech, Hamamd Azhar said during his tenure, the country’s exports continuously decreased while the PTI government had managed to reverse the exports trend from negative to positive as by February this year, the exports increased by over 20 percent in quantity term and by over 14 percent in dollar term.
He said unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic disturbed the world economic scenario and also affected Pakistan’s exports. However, he expressed his confident that “as soon as the situation gets normal, our exports would resume its upward trajectory.”
He said the Federal board of Revenue was on track to achieve the revised target of Rs4.9 trillion but it could not meet it due to emergence of COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
Dispelling the PML-N’s impression of managing a decent increase in revenue collection during its tenure, Hammad Azhar said increase was not sufficient as the tax to gross domestic product (GDP) was up by a little bit above one percent only.
He said previous government’s growth was temporary based on imports, however, the incumbent government was determined to ensure stable growth that would be based on exports and foreign investment.
The minister pointed out that despite GDP growth of over five percent, the international rating agency Moody’s downgraded the Pakistan’s economy as Pakistan’s CAD was expanding and due to the reason the present government’s foremost attention was on reducing CAD.
He said the PTI government had managed to bring the current account deficit down from $19 billion a year in 2018 to only $3 billion now.
With respect to petrol prices, the minister said during recent recession of petroleum prices in the world market, the country in the region that passed on the highest benefits to the people was Pakistan.
He clarified that petroleum development levy and sales tax on petroleum products was not increased and had been kept same at previous levels.
Responding to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Naveed Qamar’s comment over highlighting the current account deficit (CAD), Hammad Azhar explained that during the last 20 years, high CAD was the root cause of worst economic situation of the country.
He said due to high CAD, the GDP growth rate suffered and the government had to initiate stabilization process which ultimately affected the GDP growth rate and inflationary pressure increased that caused increase in interest rate.
“The opposition also knows well as they also faced the same situation and they had to go through stabilization process, and during first year of PPP government in 2008, the growth rate went down to as low as under one percent”, he added.
With respect to debt repayment, the minister informed that the PTI government had repaid external debts worth of $10 billion per year and in two years it also paid Rs5,000 billion as interest on debts.