Economy in much better condition than 2018: Hammad

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Hammad Azhar said despite challenges, the country’s economy was in much better condition than it was back in 2018 when the incumbent government assumed power.

Talking in live call session along with Prime Minister Imran Khan, the federal minister said no doubt challenges were there but there was sea of difference between the Pakistan of 2018 and today’s Pakistan. He said in 2018, the country was at the verge of default but today’s Pakistan, even after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, was moving ahead on the path of growth and progress in a better way and was much ahead of growth forecast.

He said in 2018, the economic indicators were in worse condition and couldn’t be shared with the public through media for their negative impact. “Had we openly talked to people about these indicators it would have created crisis in currency market and stock market,” he said and remarked that the country was virtually at the brink of default.

The foreign exchange reserves had almost finished and the existing around US $7 to $8 billion, which were in State Bank, were reserves on the basis of short-term loans, which had to be paid back in two to three months. In this condition, the minister added, the government had to take some hard decisions and had to devalue currency and increase interest rate. Afterwards these decisions started giving results and the historic current account deficit, which the government inherited, turned into surplus after 17 years.

After that the world organisations, which had earlier downgraded the economy, started upgrading it one year after the incumbent government assumed power. He said amid the journey of economy recovery was successfully going on when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and contracted economies by 5 to 10 percent including in India, the UK and other countries.

However, he said, Pakistan witnessed contraction of only 0.4 percent in economic growth due to prudent policies of the government which took right decision at right time to save both lives of people as well as their livelihoods.

“We moved forward with a proper strategy and did not follow the Western policy blindly and our economy suffered just 0.4 percent contraction and that too was recovered very early,” he added.