The Minister of Finance, Muhammad Aurengzeb, emphasized Wednesday that all sectors will have to “enter” to increase country exports.
When heading to the business community in Peshawar, the Minister of Finance emphasized the need to move away from the boom and bust cycle experienced in the past, and added that “it is very easy to simply pump liquidity.”
“However, when it reaches four percent growth, and because it is directed by imports and depends on imports, it runs out of dollars and faces the problem of payment balance,” he said, highlighting that the country is approaching to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to prevent the breach of their payments.
In 2023, the decreases in foreign reserves in the country had increased alarms, since they reached $ 4.6 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports, while the rupee underwent its greatest devaluation in the history of 15 by hundred.
Pakistan and the IMF had reached an help contract of three years and $ 7 billion in July 2024, with the new program ready to allow the country to “cimet the macroeconomic stability and create conditions for a stronger, more inclusive and more inclusive growth resistant”.
The extended financing program of 37 months consists of six revisions on the life of the rescue, and the release of the next section of approximately $ 1 billion will depend on the success of the performance review.
By reaffirming support for textiles, agriculture and exports of IT, Aurengzeb said the responsibility extended beyond these sectors, asking the business community to export: “even if it is a PC or two PC.”
“This protection given in the country without sunset clauses will no longer continue, each sector has to participate,” he said, adding that rice exports would play $ 4 billion this year.
In the reforms of the Federal Income Office (FBR), Aurengzeb said they were taking measures to reduce human intervention in tax collection.
Increasing the relationship imposed on GDP is a key condition of the loan agreement of $ 7 billion of Pakistan with the IMF, which was necessary to underpin a hesitant economy and administer its growing debts.
“When human intervention decreases, the escape will decrease, which is a softer word of saying corruption,” he added.
“We are trying to bring FBR, which is our fiscal authority, trust and credibility,” he said.
“I mean that a structural step we have given is that fiscal policy has been taken from FBR and placed in the Ministry of Finance,” he said, citing the reason to make the policy “based on economic considerations” and that the authority Prosecutor focuses solely on tax collection.
After decades of lapses, the Government in February took the first step to separate the fiscal policy from the Income Administration and notified the creation of the Fiscal Policy Office (TPO), headed by the Minister of Finance.
According to the IMF IMF in progress, Pakistan had assumed the company to establish TPO under the supervision of the Minister of Finance to ensure that he had enough teeth for the implementation of policies, according to the IMF documents.
The TPO will devise fiscal policies and proposals through data modeling, income and economic prognosis, and international tax treaties and obligations, added.
