September 02, 2016
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 Friday said continued weakness in the external sector may force country to knock the door of IMF again.
Three vital sectors considered important for keeping the Forex reserves including exports, remittances and foreign direct investment are declining while imports the main drag on reserves continue to increase, he said.
If the trend continued, the government which was planning to abandon IMF programme in the current fiscal will have to enter another programme, he warned.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that exports continue to fall since three years but corrective measures were not taken despite the insistence of local exporters, IMF and other institutions.
Government has given some relaxations to the exporters which are not enough in the current tough global market environment, he added.
The business leader said that ninety percent of the workers remittances come from KSA, UK, US, UAE and GCC countries which have showing dismal performance.
Massive retrenchment of Pakistani workers in KSA may result in a permanent fall of two billion dollars in remittances while their plight will have a negative impact on our economy, he said.
Mian Zahid said that Pakistan received 63 million dollars as FDI in July in which 54 million were meant for the stock market. The rest of the small amount was for important sectors which indicate a 48 percent fall.
He said that reforms including agri package, auto policy, tax on bank transactions, tax amnesty scheme, efforts to bring traders and property market in the tax net etc. have not proved successful multiplying problems for the government.
