WASHINGTON, April 16: Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, who returns home on Wednesday after attending more than two dozen meetings in five days, has said the government’s economic reforms will ultimately help the people by creating new jobs and reducing power tariffs.
Briefing journalists and diplomats at the Pakistan embassy in Washington at the end of his visit, the finance minister said the Pakistani economy was already “off the life support system and surviving on its own.”
He, however, refused to give a timeframe for the benefits of his reforms to trickle down to people, saying he was not in a position to make such predictions. “Short-term measures and gimmicks do not help, economic reforms over a sustained period do,” he said.
He agreed with a questioner who said that widespread unemployment in a society generated violence, but said the government had already taken measures to deal with the issue.
Over the next five years, he said, the government planned to improve the lives of people by creating employment opportunities.
“Promoting investment, improving the growth rate, without compromising on the hard-earned macroeconomic stability, are the key elements of this vision,” said the minister.
This year, he said, the GDP growth rate was 4.5 per cent and is expected to increase to 5 per cent next year. “As we cross the 5 per cent growth mark next year, you will see new jobs.”
Mr Aziz said during his current visit, he held a series of meetings with the World Bank and IMF officials and with senior representatives of the Bush administration. Bilateral meetings were also held with delegates from Britain, France and Saudi Arabia.
The main theme of these talks, he said, was to encourage donors to provide more support for economic reforms undertaken by the government.
Main issues discussed with US officials were debt relief, a role for Pakistan in Iraq’s reconstruction, and economic cooperation with Afghanistan on a regional basis.
Mr Aziz said on Tuesday that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also joined a meeting scheduled with Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
