LAHORE, April 17: State Bank Governor Dr Ishrat Hussain on Saturday said that the volume of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) would be increased to Rs200 billion in the budget for 2004-05 against Rs160 billion earmarked during the current fiscal year.
"The increase in the PSDP volume has been possible only due to decrease in the fiscal deficit and bringing in discipline in the government spendings," he said while talking to executive committee members of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry here.
Dr Ishrat said the country was eyeing on a growth rate of six per cent during the next fiscal year, from 5.8 per cent during the current fiscal year.
He eulogized the private sector in making these achievements possible by increasing the production and value-addition in different economic sectors.
Dr Ishrat said the government was patronizing the private sector so that more and more jobs could be created for the youth. He said the government alone could not overcome the problem of unemployment as the over-employment in the state enterprises like PIA and Railways resulted in financial haemorrhaging of Rs100 billion per annum.
The SBP governor said the downward revision of export refinance mark-up rate to three per cent and banking interest rates had helped bring down the cost of financing.
He said that the private sector got a credit worth Rs235 billion during the first nine months of the current fiscal year against Rs85 billion in the corresponding period last year.
"Banks are now looking for more customers," he said.
WTO, SAFTA: The SBP governor while dispelling the fears of business community about the upcoming WTO and Safta regimes, said that Pakistani economy was resilient enough to take benefit of new opportunities offered by these agreements.
"Business community should act with all the confidence to grapple the new opportunities," he said.
He said that both Pakistan and India would take benefit of trade under Safta arrangements.
Referring to his discussions with certain Indian businessmen, he said that Pakistani industrialists would be able in importing raw material for the industry, especially the engineering sector from India at affordable prices.
"The agreement will open up a market of 1.1 billion people to Pakistani exporters," he said.
Talking about WTO, Dr Ishrat said that Pakistan had revised the import duties to 25 per cent against the WTO provision of up to 50 per cent. In case of any threat to the local industry, these duties could be raised to 50 per cent, he added.-APP
