Daily Times

LAHORE: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday, while presenting a report on the first quarter of the fiscal year 2018-19, claimed that the revenue collection targets have been achieved.

He was addressing a press conference in Islamabad.

Talking about the improvement in the economic situation of the country he said, “Revenue collection from July to September stood at Rs765 billion with which is 20 percent higher than last year.”

Taking the credit for reducing overall budget deficit he claimed, “The overall fiscal deficit in percentage terms is 0.9pc compared to 1.3pc in the first quarter last year.”

He also said that the country’s foreign reserves are not standing at an alarming level. “Our foreign reserves stand at 14 billion dollars,” he added.

He further claimed that the inflation is under control and the interest rates are lowest in decades.

Sharing his goal as a finance minister he said, “Our real objective should be higher growth because that only will push the economy in the right direction.”

“We have monitored, managed, and controlled expenditures to a large extent” Dar claimed.

The minister rejected the allegations that there are terrorist centuries in the country’s territory. “Some countries say that Pakistan is home to sanctuaries of certain terrorist organisations but these claims are completely false,” he remarked.

Praising the security forces for their sacrifices in counter terrorism efforts he said, “Pakistan army is doing an excellent job to improve the security situation.”

Moreover, he claimed that the load-shedding has been reduced as compared to the 18-hours outages in the past.

He also took the credit of bringing the circular debt under 400 billion rupees.