March 12, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 3, 1429

ISLAMABAD, March 11: President Pervez Musharraf has asked the new government to take bold decisions to meet difficult challenges, such as bringing down prices and providing relief to the masses.

Addressing the first convocation of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economists (PIDE), he said that inflation was one of the major challenges and warranted some immediate relief to be offered to the poorest of the poor through targeted intervention.

He said that the government had already been providing substantial subsidy on seven food items through utility stores.

The price of wheat, he pointed out, had surged in the international market with production declining globally.

Referring to recent elections, the president said he had fulfilled his promise of holding fair, free, transparent and peaceful elections and now I have also signed the summary and convened a session of the National Assembly.

Giving an overview of the national economy, Mr Musharraf said the new government would have to overcome three challenges: it must sustain the economic growth; it must keep fighting terrorism to defeat it; and it should ensure political stability to achieve the first two objectives.

The economy, he said, was under pressure on three fronts -- soaring oil prices in the world, rising prices of edible oil and wheat shortage.

To overcome the energy shortage and to reduce the burden on the economy, the country needed to go for hydro, coal, gas and nuclear-power generation, he said.

He said an amount of $2 billion was being spent on the import of edible oil and we must find substitutes.

Referring to Tuesday’s terrible bomb blasts in Lahore, he said such acts must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. He described the incident as a heinous act and sheer madness in the name of the great religion of Islam.

Nothing could be more damaging for the nation and for our great religion than such acts of terrorism, the president said.

Highlighting economic achievements of the past eight years, the president said the size of economy had risen from $64 billion in 2002 to $160 billion in 2007-08. The per capita income, he asserted, had increased to over $900 per annum and revenue collection, which was about Rs360 billion in 1999, was expected to hit Rs1 trillion by the end of the current financial year.

He said exports, which had stagnated at $9 billion, had crossed the $18 billion mark while foreign direct investment (FDI), which used to be $300 million in the past, had now reached $8 billion per annum and debt-to-GDP ratio had declined from 101 per cent to 52 per cent, more than the European bench mark. He said stock exchanges of the country had also been performing well, setting an all-time record.

Referring to higher education, he said the government had allocated Rs28 billion for the vital sector as against Rs600 million allocated eight years ago.

He said it was heartening to know that the PhD programme initiated by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) had produced 1,000 PhDs in the country – 350 from foreign universities and 650 from Pakistani Universities – which, he said, was a quantum jump. He said that nine top universities of the world in science and technology were being set up with the assistance of developed countries and this would help produce a top quality human resource base in the country. Three such universities, he said, had already opened and others would soon be coming up.