KARACHI: Crediting the present regime with having met the large challenge of economic disparity squarely and for the first time, the Finance Minister, Mr. Mohammad Shoaib, yesterday pledged to the countrymen that all-out efforts were being made to fulfil the constitutional obligation to remove this disparity between East and West Pakistan “in the shortest possible time”. Quoting figures from the East Pakistan provincial budget, and the recently released report of the National Income Commission, Mr Shoaib rebutted the allegations made by the Awami League leader, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, in a recent statement.

Mr Shoaib said that while in the eight years preceding 1958, the average annual development expenditure in East Pakistan was only Rs 11 crores, it has risen to Rs 104 crores in the last six years. Likewise, the per capita income, which was declining between 1950 and 1958, rose at more than three per cent per annum in the four years from 1959-60 to 1963-64. The disparity was increasing in the earlier period when East Pakistan’s total income grew at 2.0 per cent, and that of West Pakistan at 2.8 per cent, but it has increased in the latter period when the respective growth rates were 3.9 per cent and 5.0 per cent.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2014