March 30, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 26, 1424

ISLAMABAD, March 29: The government has decided to shape its own economic and monetary policies to largely benefit the common man in the country.

Official sources told Dawn here on Saturday that Prime Minister Mir Zafarallah Khan Jamali would soon be chairing a high-level meeting to discuss and finalize the government’s new economic policies.

All the three major multilateral agencies — World Bank, IMF and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) — sources said, were being informed that while the basic thrust of previous policies will remain unchanged, new measures will have to be taken to adequately removing poverty and providing jobs to the people.

Mr. Jamali’s advisers were being told to convene a meeting to be attended by ministers for finance, commerce, industries & production, petroleum, water and power, governor State Bank, chairman Board of Investment (BoI), deputy chairman Planning Commission and chairman Privatization Commission to discuss major economic issues confronting the common man.

“The prime minister wants his own economic team in place to take major policy decisions”, a source said. He said the prime minister has conveyed to the senior government officials that he did not want to go in the history as a prime minister who did not deliver specially in minimizing the difficulties of the poorer classes.

Sources said during a high-level meeting likely to be convened in the last week of April, the prime minister would also outline his government’s priorities regarding the formulation of the new budget.

He has directed his Adviser on Finance Shaukat Aziz, who would soon be made the finance minister, to prepare fresh details about the economy and new opportunities to improve the plight of the common man.

Sources quoted the prime minister as having said that wherever he went people complained that despite having over $10 billion foreign exchange reserves and foreign remittances worth $3 billion, their economic hardships did not reduce.

Aziz, sources said, has been directed by the prime minister to carve 2003-04 budget in such a manner that it offers definite “relief” to the people.