KARACHI, Feb 6: A jam-packed audience burst into laughter on Wednesday when the caretaker Finance Minister Dr Salman Shah announced that the new setup after the polls “will inherit a very sound economy, which no other new government in the past ever inherited.”

Speaking at the launching of Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) regulations 2008, the minister deviated from the subject to say that now the country is moving towards general elections and a new government will come into existence which, according to him, will inherit a very sound economy.

As he spoke these words, many were unable to resist their smiles.

Those in the back rows were relatively more at ease to exhibit their amusement and there were remarks about people experiencing power outages, low gas pressures, wheat flour crisis and of increasing commodity prices.

Dr Shah’s argument in favour of his assertion of a sound economy was the existence of a large diversified economy with gross output of 160 billion dollars.

“Eight years ago, the size of economy was just 60 billion dollars,’’ he asserted to point out that the growth achieved in last eight years has outperformed the total growth in last 60 years.

In real terms, he said the economy grew at an average rate of seven per cent a year in the last five years.

In terms of current US dollar, the economy has been growing at double digit a year. As a result, per capita income has increased from around 450 dollars to around 1,000 dollars in the last eight years.

The minister also claimed improvement in jobs creation with unemployment rate coming down from 8.3 per cent to 5.5 per cent. Two million jobs were created in the last eight years.

Booming investment was another example given by Dr Salman as he said investment touched eight billion dollars last fiscal from merely a few hundred million dollars a year a decade ago.

Remittances crossed six billion dollars, revenue collection crossed 15 billion dollars, reserves rose to 15 billion dollars and expansion of public sector development programme beyond Rs500 billion were some other instances quoted by the minister, who said the biggest challenge for the new government would be to sustain and carry forward the growth tempo of the last eight years.

Later answering questions from journalists, Dr Salman expressed the hope that the government would maintain a growth tempo in the remaining period of the current fiscal year to achieve the growth target.

He said that the government would be able to retire a big amount of money borrowed from the central and commercial bankers in the coming months.

He explained that government’s borrowing in the first half of any fiscal year is always too high which is retired in the second half of the fiscal year when exports pick up.

Revenue collection is improved and all other indicators show positive trends.

The minister said that Pakistan’s exports are more competitive than those of China and India because of appreciation in value of Indian and Chinese currencies.

The budgetary position, he said would improve when the government would start passing on the impact of rising international oil prices to consumers in the coming days.