(15th November 2017)
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President AKIA, Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Wednesday said government’s decision to get around three billion dollars of loan from international debt market is a good move.
Getting a loan from the debt market will reduce pressure on the depleting forex reserves as the exports continue to grow beating expectations, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that government should conduct a proper market survey before launching bonds and the volume of the loan should be kept flexible according to the market conditions.
He said that the latest loan will push the volume of foreign loans acquired by the government over the last four years to thirty-eight billion dollars but it will help reduce pressure over the central bank and forex reserves.
The veteran leader said that dependency on loans should be tackled by introducing meaningful reforms and economy cannot become stable in presence of loans of this magnitude.
Merchandise exports grew by ten percent in the first four months of the current fiscal year while the services jumped by six percent but the imports remained 19.2 percent which is highly unsustainable.
The trade deficit in the last four months jumped to 31.2 percent to 12.1 billion dollars while the same was nine billion dollars during the same period in the last fiscal.
The former minister said that exports have been improved as exporters have slashed their profit margins to become eligible for rebate announced in January by the former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif.
