Budget 2021-22: Shaukat Tarin Presents National Economic Survey

Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin presented the National Economic Survey for the financial year 2020-21.

Addressing a news conference in Islamabad, Shaukat Tarin said that the financial year 2021 started during the global pandemic of coronavirus.

He said that with the effective policy of this government, the effects of the COVID-19 were eliminated and economic activities started resuming in July last year.

He said that the government had taken far-sighted decisions, including a major decision by the Prime Minister on smart lockdown, besides monetary and fiscal decisions, incentive decisions were taken in key ministries, including the construction sector, and the Prime Minister was able to take special concessions from the IMF.

The Finance Minister said that since then the rapid vaccination process has started and the establishment of NCOC and decision making under one roof was a big process that led to overcoming the quad last year and the third wave in February-March.

Shaukat Tarin said that when COVID-19 was started, there were about 56 million people employed, which dropped to 35 million.

He said that the Prime Minister had a very cautious policy on pandemic which was not followed by many countries but in our country itself it was initially questioned.

He said that due to these policies, the number of employed persons has again increased to 53 million in October 2020, which means that out of 55 million, about 2.5 million people remained and the economy has started recovering.

The finance minister said that in the last budget, the government had projected a growth rate of 2.1 per cent, while the IMF and World Bank estimates were even lower, but the decision taken by the government in the manufacturing, textile, agriculture and construction sectors, gas, Concessions were given in electricity and other sectors, as a result of which large-scale manufacturing showed positive growth of about 9%.

“Agriculture grew by 2.77 per cent. Although we feared negative growth due to poor cotton, the other four crops, wheat, rice, sugarcane and maize, performed better,” he said.

“Remittances have set a record and remittances have now exceeded 26 26 billion, and we estimate that will reach $29 billion,” he said.

The Finance Minister said that as the economy started growing, the price of oil went up and the import of food items increased, we imported wheat and sugar and Pakistan, which was about to export food items, has become an importer.

He said that the increase in remittances shows the special relationship of overseas Pakistanis with Prime Minister Imran Khan. The World Bank and various investigations had suggested that the remittances would decrease due to the Covid crisis. It is currently growing at a record high of 29%.

He further said that remittances were sent by Allah as an angel for us as it was very important for our foreign exchange as our current account has been in surplus for the last 10 months.

The finance minister said that more than $1 billion has flowed into the Roshal digital accounts, while the SBP’s foreign exchange reserves, which had gone up to 7 7 billion in 2018-19, have now reached 16 16 billion, a four-year high. The highest level.

“The government has performed well to fulfil the points of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) adding that Pakistan will get relief in the next review meeting,” Tareen said.

I can’t predict at the moment that we will be on the white list from Gray, but the feedback from their committees is very satisfactory, Tarin said.

He said that the tax collection of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is also impressive and in 11 months we have reached Rs 42 trillion which is 18% more than last year though at the beginning of the financial year.

“Since March, the growth of tax collection on a monthly basis has been 50 to 60 per cent higher, so we estimate that we will go beyond the estimate of Rs 47 trillion,” he said.

Also Read

Budget 2021-22: Direct, Indirect Taxes Will Likely To Rise

Budget 2021-22: The federal budget is scheduled to be announced on June...