Economic Survey 210-11 Released

Government must Cut Expenses to Save Economy;

Four Factors Failed the Gov to Achieve Economic Goals: FM

ISLAMABAD, June 02, 2011 (INFN): ‘The government must cut non-development expenses in order to save the struggling economy of the country,’ are the words of Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Finance Minister, as he addressed a press briefing after releasing the Economic Survey Report 2010-2011 in Islamabad on Thursday.

The Minister said that the government had to face many challenges during the previous Fiscal Year (FY) that made it difficult to gain the economic goals.

“Among these, the historic floods caused a major devastation that reached a loss of Rs 850 billion ($ 10b) according to the third party estimates like that of World Bank etc.,” he explained.

The second major factor that failed us in achieving our goals was the subsidy worth Rs 5 billion that was given by the government to give relief to the public in electricity charges. The third factor was the poor law and order and security condition of the country that evolved a perception which made the foreign investors feel Pakistan is not a safe place to invest their money besides forcing the government to spend more on the security and law enforcement sector.

The finance minister concluded that the final factor that failed us to achieve the economic goals was the oil sector which he claimed to be ‘the input of economy’ and that has cost the government a loss of Rs 50 billion, due to the shaky prices of oil in the international market caused by the uncertainty in the Arab states. The production sector also affected as the energy production declined. The minister later briefed the media about the salient features of the Economic Survey and briefly discussed growth or otherwise in major sectors of economy one by one.