ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Miftah Ismail said that the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) revenue collection has doubled in last five years.
Addressing a press conference along with Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal and Adviser to PM on Finance Miftah Ismail and Minister of State for Finance Rana Afzal, Miftah said that the tax machinery collected Rs1946 billion in 2012-13 which would now go up to Rs4,013 billion.
Unveiling the government’s plan to present the upcoming budget on April 27 in Parliament, He Ismail said that inflation had come down during PML-N government’s tenure.
Miftah Ismail said the foreign currency reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan would be maintained at $12.5 billion by end of the current fiscal while circular debt of worth Rs150 billion would be cleared before completing the tenure of the government. The foreign currency reserves held by the SBP had already depleted to around $12.23 billion.
At the end of the press conference when asked how the reserves will be maintained at $12.5 billion when it declined by almost $1 billion in the last few weeks, the minister said that of course they would borrow money but declined to share further plan. “We have consulted political parties including the PPP and PTI and decided to present the next budget on April 27 as our tenure will be completed on May 31, 2018. There should be ample time that the provinces can also present their respective budgets and get approval before ending of their tenure,” Miftah Ismail said.
He said the debt to GDP ratio stood at 61.6 percent as domestic debt rose from 38.8 percent to 41 percent in the last five years while external debt decreased from 21.4 percent of GDP to 20.6 percent of GDP in this period. “We borrowed money to finance power sector and many other development projects,” he added.
On rising current account deficit, he said that the trade deficit used to be in the range of 2 to 3 percent of GDP which could be financed easily but after jump in imports of machinery and raw material for installing power plants, LNG terminals and others, it could not be possible by curtailing imports. Now in February 2018, the growth in exports has gone up in the range of 15 percent while imports growth reduced to 8 percent, he further said.
Without sharing price of petroleum products in international market, Adviser to PM on Finance said that the price of petrol, diesel and kerosene were higher in the PPP-led tenure of five years compared to existing prices in PML-N regime. The price of gas and electricity was also on higher side during last regime of PPP from 2008 to 2013 in comparison from tenure of PML-N from 2013 to 2018.
Federal Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal also said the government consciously adopted aggressive path of growth and investment knowingly its negative effects for rising external financing requirements in few years but they could not compromise causing slower growth because of catering new job entrant youth in the range of 2 million.
The PML-N ministers said the decision of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for putting Pakistan into grey list was aimed at serving ‘political motives’ taken on behest of US pressures.
“Without completion of mutual evaluation, the FATF opened up Pakistan’s issue on pressures exerted by USA for political motives. The PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari has been criticising the government because of putting into grey list but he forgot that Pakistan fell into blacklist during the last PPP-led regime,” Federal Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal said in a news conference along with Adviser to PM on Finance Miftah Ismail and Minister of State for Finance Rana Afzal on Friday.
He said that no sword was hanging on our heads because of FATF because the country had already graduated from black to grey and then into white list in last few years. He said that European Union had extended GSP Plus after admitting that Islamabad took steps to eliminate terror financing after placing National Action Plan.
