Yokohama: Finance Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar who is in Yokohama Japan had a number of meetings on sidelines of the 50th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which started Thursday.
According to press statement issued by the Ministry of Finance, the minister met with the ADB President and briefed him about the economic performance and achievements of Pakistan and government’s policies to enhance growth while reducing budgetary deficit.
The Finance Minister highlighted that due to effective steps taken by the government, the GDP growth rate was at an eight years high in FY 2016 i.e at 4.7% whereas the fiscal deficit had been reduced by more than half i.e. from 8.8% to 4.6%.
The Finance Minister highlighted that these achievements in economic growth had been achieved despite Pakistan waging war against terrorism which had cost more than $3billion for security operations in last three years alone.
He said that Pakistan has setup the Pakistan Development Fund for the development of critical infrastructure and hoped that ADB would strengthen its support for such an important initiative.
President ADB lauded Pakistan’s efforts and stated that there was wide spread recognition of government’s success in turning the economy around.
He said that improvement in economic fundamentals greatly assures the international investors and donors alike and now it was expected that more foreign direct investment would flow towards
