Pakistan economy growing despite oil price surge, Oct 8 calamity
By Indo Asian News Service
Islamabad, June 5 (IANS) Pakistan's economy has delivered another year of solid economic growth in 2005-06 amid an extraordinary surge in oil prices and the devastating earthquake of Oct 8, 2005.
The country registered economic growth at 6.6 percent and investment rate reached a new height at 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Online news agency said.
'Over the last five years, the government has spent Rs.1,332 billion ($22.1 billion) on poverty related and social sector programmes. But poverty is still a grave concern and we are focusing on further measures to reduce it,' said Salman Shah, advisor on finance and revenue to the prime minister.
The adviser interacted with the media in the inaugural ceremony of economic survey of Pakistan 2005-06 here. The state minister of finance Omer Ayub was also present in the function.
Shah said that Pakistan had become one of the emerging economies among growing nations like China, India and Brazil as it had stepped up a solid economic growth in the year 2005-06.
He said that real per capita GDP had grown by 4.7 percent and per capita income in current dollar term was up by 14.2 percent reaching $847 during the year 2005-06.
'Most notably private sector investment remained buoyant owing to a rare confluence of various positive developments in the country,' he said.
The overall inflation stands decelerating from nine percent in July 2005 to 6.2 percent in April 2006. Food inflation slowed down from 9.7 percent to 3.6 percent in the same period.
'Energy consumption, particularly electricity and gas continue to rise at double digit level reflecting strong buoyancy in the economy,' he added.
He said that the strong growing economy had created employment opportunities reducing unemployment and 5.82 million new jobs had been created until the first half of 2005-06.
'Population living below the poverty line has fallen from 34.46 percent in 2000-01 to 23.9 percent in 2004-05, a decline of 10.6 percent,' he said.
The adviser maintained that major crops registered a negative growth of 3.6 percent whereas the livestock recorded a growth to eight percent pulling the overall growth in agriculture to 2.5 percent as against the target of 4.2 percent.
The overseas Pakistanis' remittance stood at around $4.5 billion as one of the main source of the external finance to the country while foreign direct investment had exceeded three billion dollars during the current year, he added.
Copyright Indo-Asian News Service |
