According to the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the current government is like to achieve 5.28 percent growth rate during the current fiscal year, but has missed the projected target of 5.7 percent. The country achieved 6.8 percent growth rate a decade ago during President Pervez Musharraf’s regime, but the ensuing democratic governments failed to reach this target until today. The last year’s target was 5.5 percent, but only 4.51 percent could be achieved.A good news is that the large-scale manufacturing sector has shown good performance and marked a growth rate of 10.46 percent in March on a year-on-year basis, which is the highest growth in the last few years. The growth was recorded at 8 percent in February. In the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the large-scale manufacturing sector grew by 5.06 percent. The production data of 36 items was received from the Ministry of Industries and Production while another data of 65 items was received from the provincial bureaus of statistics, showingan overall growth of 3.97 percent and 1.07 percent, respectively.However, the production data received from the Oil Companies Advisory Committee of 11 items indicated a very bleak growth of only 0.03 percent in March.
The problem faced by the government and independent institutions is that a major share of economy is undocumented and all the efforts to bring them into official papers have not only failed but backfired. A big chunk of the business community avoids coming into the tax net despite minting billions of rupees taxable income a year. On another note, the government is also not able to soften the tax laws for the new and genuine taxpayers to protect them from the alleged highhandedness of the corrupt officials. Tough laws bring more trouble for honest tax officials, but give magic wand in the hands of black sheep to exploit the law for vested interest.
The biggest problem currently facing the industry is energy crisis. The government had promised that it would end power outages in a couple of years, but three and half years have been passed without improvement in the power supply. A better investment climate, tax concessions and a developed infrastructure with cheap electricity are a few components to enhance growth rate. It is yet to be seen how the government will work on all these components to achieve the desired goals.
