DACCA: Inaugurating the second All Pakistan Exporters Convention here this morning [Dec 8], the Central Commerce Minister, Mr Ghulam Faruque, brought into the limelight the “somewhat uncanny developments in our economy” which have resulted from the large gap in the balance of payments for sometime past.

The Minister, who was addressing well over 100 delegates from both the Wings of the country, including top industrialists and businessmen, said that the progress achieved so far as a result of efforts of the Government and the private sector had been something that “we could really talk of”. But the pumping in of large sums of external aid had, to some extent, created a feeling of “dependency and complacency in us” with the country having come to rely on an annual flow of over 200 million dollars.

Drawing the attention of the delegates to the decreasing quantum of aid with “progressively hardened terms of payment”, the Commerce Minister drove home the need for “standing on our own feet”. He said: “We must persistently and diligently move to the position that the gap between our needs and our earnings is removed.”

He asked for the mobilisation of the country’s “large natural resources and still larger human resources” for increased production in order to attain a substantial increase in the export earnings in the shortest possible time. — Correspondent

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Saigon,] the United States Military Police today detained the Mayor of Saigon, disarmed him of a tommy gun, and put him in handcuffs after shots had been heard near the American Embassy.

Later Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge apologised to the South Viet-Namese authorities and said the incident was a “regrettable misunderstanding”, a US spokesman said.

Informed sources said that at 01.45 (local time) this morning, US Military Police outside the Embassy heard automatic weapons fire, allegedly from the Mayor, Col Van Van Cua, firing bursts with a Thompson sub-machinegun across the Saigon river.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016