Cabinet panel to prepare economic revival plans

ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet Committee on Revival of Economy has decided to prepare a medium-to-long-term plan and hand it over to the upcoming government after the general elections.

Now the question arises: how will the upcoming government become bounded to implement the plan prepared by the caretakers? The upcoming government, if the elections are held even in the next calendar year, will implement its own economic manifesto instead of a plan devised by unelected caretakers.

This decision to prepare a medium-to-long-term plan was taken during the maiden meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Revival of Economy under the Caretaker Minister for Finance, Dr Shamshad Akhtar, held here on Tuesday.

The caretaker premier has constituted this cabinet committee with the involvement of key ministers and bureaucrats to devise short-, medium-, and long-term plans to revive the economy.

Sources said that the meeting discussed the possibility of preparing medium- to long-term plans when the country was under the IMF programme. The finance minister made it clear that she would deal with the IMF. However, she conceded that the government did not have the financial resources to provide incentives to any sector, but it possessed the capacity to do any required tinkering to remove bottlenecks confronted by different sectors of the economy.

No official statement was issued after the first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Revival.

During the initial meeting, Minister for Commerce Ejaz Gohar presented his plan to jack up the country’s exports to $80 billion, and in this regard, his ministry was preparing a detailed framework to boost exports.

The caretaker minister was of the view that textile exports could be increased up to $40 billion and the share of other sectors could also go up to achieve the envisaged target for taking exports up to $80 billion.