Federal Minister for Planning and Development, Asad Umar, said on Friday that the federal government had approved a 4.8 percent GDP growth for the next fiscal year.
He said this during his visit to the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce today when the government announced it had achieved a growth target of nearly 4% in the current year.
“The size of the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) has increased by 40 percent from Rs 650 billion to Rs 900 billion next year, which would be the biggest spending in a year in the history of Pakistan,” he said during a press conference in Islamabad on Friday.
The planning and development minister said there was an unnecessary outcry about GDP growth, with people saying that international bodies projected less growth.
“We are making decisions with a better intention and we don’t want to close deals and impose blockades,” he said.
The federal minister said there were six to seven major sectors from which the future growth rate would come. The first, he said, was cotton production, which has been badly affected in the past and also in the current year because of which “we face a lot of losses”.
This year, arrangements were made for better seeds and the emphasis was placed on providing good quality pesticides also working to improve the poultry and livestock that had been severely affected by Covid-19, which caused a price increase, but would contribute to growth in the future as it progressed towards normalization.
In addition, we are also seeing an increase in electricity consumption of 6%, but the government predicted that this electricity demand would continue to increase in the next year and this was also contributing to growth.
Asad Umar said that 3.94% GDP growth in the current year was based on productive sectors, however, during the previous government, the growth rate was driven by consumption, which was not a healthy sign for any economy.
