December 4, 2002	Wednesday	Ramazan 28,1423

KARACHI, Dec 3: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali wants Shaukat Aziz, adviser to the PM on economic affairs, to focus on economic policies that could generate jobs, minimize sufferings of the people and help eradicate poverty by providing enabling environment for investment and industrialization.

Speaking to the members of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry at the Federation house here on Tuesday, Mr Shaukat said the government considered the private sector as engineer of growth. He said during the previous three years, the country was passing through a phase of transformation and now a strong foundation had been laid.

“We have created fundamentals to get tangible growth, which could ensure generation of jobs, social sector development and hit the poverty issues directly.”

He said the prime minister has instructed that the focus of the economic policies should now be the economic growth, job generation and policies should be pro-people. He had directed that the economic policies which had earlier were hard on people should now be fine tuned to change the orientation.

Mr Shaukat said the growth for the year was expected at 4.5% as indicated by sectoral growth. Substantiating his plea, he said the engineering, especially motorcycles witnessed 25% growth, cement industry picking up, exports up by 16%, net revenue in July-Nov above the target, indirect tax collection is 20% up, sales tax 25% up (taxes from non-oil and non-food items increased in double digits), direct foreign investment rising and all these fundamentals are reflecting drastic positive movement in the economy.

He said the reforms in the Central Board of Revenue was being pursued in a big way to remove all snags and bottlenecks in the way of promotion of business and industry.

Mr Shaukat said the inflation which was now below 4% was lowest in the last 30 years and was the main reason of bringing the interest rate down. He said the interests rates at present prevail from 14 to 3.5%, if dollar financing is included. Even in rupee terms, he explained, the good reputed companies were getting loans at rate much below 10% which used to be a dream.

He said $800 million at the rate of 3 to 4% mark-up had been made by the banks in the first five months. The credit demand has also changed. Term Finance Certificates were all time high and changed the economic scenario.

He said he had already suggested the bankers to focus on small and medium enterprise lending market, rural and agricultural financing, consumer financing, housing and construction industry financing, mortgage business and micro financing, which had tremendous unfulfilled loan market.

He said the textile sector had seen a sea change during the last three years as the investment climate has changed. He added that the government is to provide enabling environment alone and rest has to be done by the investors.

The PM’s adviser said the foreign reserves were all time high and in next few months these would cross the $10 billion mark and once “we cross the $11 billion mark, the strategy would be changed to keep the rupee-dollar parity at a stable level so that the interest of the exporters could be guarded.”

He said the real target for the reserves was to have them at a level equal to “our debt and it would ensure economic sovereignty.”

He said the government was actively working to remove the irritants which existed at local, provincial and federal level.

Mr Shaukat said the government was looking to target the Middle East investment market as the investors of this area were reluctant in making investment in Europe under the prevailing circumstances.—APP