LSM expands 9pc to help Pakistan surpass GDP growth target: Tarin

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin is unveiling the Pakistan Economic Survey 2020-21 at a press conference in Islamabad.

Tarin started out by underscoring the impact of Covid-19 in causing the economy to contract last year. But, he said, the decisions of this government under Prime Minister Imran Khan helped the economy stabilise which resulted in improving performance on the growth front.

"The government itself had set [GDP] growth will be 2.1pc and the IMF predicted even lower. But the decisions by this government such as incentivising manufacturing and textiles, construction, and interventions in agriculture have helped the economy recover."

Tarin said large-scale manufacturing showed growth of 9pc, while the agriculture sector growth clocked in at 2.77pc – against a target of 2.8pc – despite the "cotton crop getting ruined".

He said even though the cotton crop did not perform so well, yields of other crops compensated for that, resulting in overall growth in agriculture of 2.77pc.

The finance minister said the government wanted to control inflation "but prices are still high and affecting the common man".

"So the way to solve this is by increasing production and that is why we have focused on agriculture in this budget," Tarin said.

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More to follow.

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