March 9, 2006	Thursday	Safar 8, 1427

LONDON, March 8: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Wednesday said US President George W. Bush’s recent visit to Pakistan would help further strengthen the existing relations between the two countries, especially economic ties.

He was addressing a conference on securities, portfolios, investors and fund managers arranged by AKD Securities.

During the question-answer session, the prime minister said Pakistan and the United States would conclude the Bilateral Investment Treaty in a couple of months.

The prime minister asked the UK investors to invest in Pakistan. “Our government is encouraging the private sector and greatly respect its role in socio-economic development. We have adopted a holistic approach to craft the reform agenda and ensured continuity and consistency in our policies,” Mr Aziz added.

“We have introduced major, broad-based economic reforms,” he said, adding that deregulation, liberalization and privatization are the basic principles on which the reforms were based.

“We have made a tremendous progress but a lot more needs to be done and we are working on introducing second generation reforms. Our reforms are based on fundamental policies which are not going to change.”

He said there was a level-playing field for investors in Pakistan and the country was working on improving the necessary infrastructure to facilitate local and foreign investment.

GDP GROWTH: State Bank Governor Shamshad Akhtar said on Wednesday Pakistan’s economy should grow by 6.5 to seven per cent in the fiscal year ending June this year.

Ms Akhtar, who became the first woman in charge of the State Bank of Pakistan in early January, also said the bank would have to continue to apply a tight monetary policy to curb speculative market forces.

“I believe the macro economic prospects point to a strong and robust growth in real GDP in the range of 6.5 to 7.0 per cent for (fiscal) 2006,” she said in a speech to a Pakistan investment conference in London. She stressed that the central bank, which has kept its discount rate at nine per cent since raising it to this level in April last year, was giving attention to strong asset prices.—APP/Reuters