Govt committed to achieve sustainable economic growth: Asad Umar

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Asad Umar on Thursday said that the government is committed to improve the fundamentals of economy and achieving sustainable and balanced economic growth.

According to a statement released from the ministry, Asad Umar stated this while chairing meeting of the Monetary and Fiscal Policies Co-ordination Board here in the federal capital.

Secretary finance gave a detailed presentation to the meeting on the economic situation and said that external balance has improved in the first four months of current fiscal year as current account contracted by 4.6 percent due to significant increase in worker’s remittances, containment in imports and increase in export growth.

He said that fiscal consolidation remained a challenge during the first quarter as fiscal deficit increased to 1.4 percent as compared to 1.2 percent of the comparable period last year.

FBR revenue continued to increase by 6.4 percent and if gains traction it may bridge up the fiscal deficit going forward, reads the statement.

The secretary also briefed the meeting about the economic reforms which the Economic Advisory Council has approved. The meeting also discussed the export credit facility offered by Saudi Arabia envisaging the purchase of crude oil and or other petroleum products  of up to USD 3.24 billion per annum on a 12 month deferred payment basis.

The meeting was told that broad money (M2) witnessed a rise of Rs.35 billion from July 2018 to 16th November 2018 as compared to decrease of Rs.67 billion in the same period last year which is entirely contributed by Net Domestic Assets (NDA) of the banking system as Net Foreign Assets (NFA) continued to contract.

Giving his concluding remarks, Finance Minister said that the decline in LSM sector needed to be studied by disaggregating the data so that appropriate measures could be taken to address the same.

He also directed the finance division to earnestly complete integrated policy paper focusing on economic strategy over the medium term.

The meeting was also attended by the minister for planning development and reforms, governor SBP, finance secretary, secretary commerce and others.