LAHORE, Feb 25: The Pakistan People’s Party-led government will give top priority to setting the country’s economy right and create more jobs to overcome the problem of unemployment, a central leader of the party said on Monday.

Information Secretary Sherry Rehman told Dawn that the incoming coalition would inherit an economic mess that arose from the last regime's mismanagement, corruption, shortsighted policies, and lack of accountability in various sectors of the economy.

"What is noteworthy is that instead of absorbing the shock of rising oil prices or planning for the future, the regime has planned to pass this on to the next elected government. The public has paid a heavy price for this profligacy and mismanagement as they grappled with inflation, artificial commodity shortages, widening trade deficit and the ever-increasing rich-poor divide", she said. The PPP leader said: "We are mindful of the miseries brought upon the public by the regime's economic policies in the last eight years."

She said it was only in wartime that one witnessed the kind of commodity shortages and subsequent food inflation that the nation experienced during the last few years. "For a major part of the eight years that the regime ruled, the country experienced acute inflation, energy crisis and food shortages. This was exacerbated by a lack of accountability that encouraged elements involved in creating shortages and fuelling inflation, to go on with the business as usual."

The PPP leader said it was important to note that artificial shortages were not the only reason behind the back-breaking rising prices. "These are the results of low agricultural productivity, narrow tax and export bases, trade policy distortions, and huge expenditures under non-development heads," she opined.

Ms Rehman said that for years, the regime paid no heed to economic experts' advice to match the agricultural growth with that of population. "There is a huge gap between the agricultural productivity and the population growth. The later has stood at 2.2 per cent plus on average against the agricultural growth that did not exceed 1.87 per cent during the last seven years."

She said the huge fiscal deficit to be inherited by her party’s government in the first seven months of the current fiscal year and the current account deficit already touching $7.51 billion mark is a result of over expenditure under non-productive heads.

"For many years, the regime survived on bank borrowing to meet the budgetary deficit. This deficit was more a result of over-expenditure on luxuries, with very little investment going into expanding the infrastructure to facilitate economic growth. In fact, massive power shortage for three consecutive years, a result of lack of investment in the power sector, severely dented the economic growth. Industrial activities were literally brought to a halt by continuous power breakdowns."

Ms Rehman commented that while on the one hand the regime relied on consumer-led growth to bulk up growth figures, it completely turned a blind eye to the need to expand the export base of the country. "For the last eight years, the regime did nothing to expand the export base of the country. About 75 per cent of the exports are contributed by four basic sources: cotton, leather, rice and sports goods. Any snag in the production of these items hit hard the country's trade balance that has been running in negative for year."

She said the public had entrusted the PPP with the huge responsibility of fixing economic imbalances. The coming months will test the patience of the public as well as the government’s as we are in for some tough decisions to fix the massive economic mess and deficits we have inherited from the regime. —Ashraf Mumtaz