Pakistan’s economy is facing serious challenges on the fiscal front. The main challenges are insufficient revenue generation and high fiscal deficit exports. An insignificant growth and fear of a slowdown in remittances. PTI government is trying to overcome the fiscal challenge in several ways but other relevant and concerned departments are not assisting the government appropriately. Even some of the government’s members are repeating their usual activities like past’s governments.
There is little scope for encouraging imports of industrial raw material to lift the country’s large-scale manufacturing sector out of recession. This, in turn, means industrial growth may remain stalled in the near future. There is also no room for the rupee to become strong enough in the short term to create demand for the import of even consumer goods. Consumption of domestically produced stuff is also dwindling because of falling income levels and high inflation. Inflation is stubbornly high and is on the rise.
Agriculture is not growing at the desired pace and industries are producing less. The PTI government is hoping for the export-sector revival. But failure to accelerate revenue collection and boost export earnings is pushing the government to continue to borrow from domestic as well as external resources. The resultant increase in the debt stock is pushing up the cost of both domestic and external debt servicing.
Saqib Ishaq
Azad Kashmir
