Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday chaired National Economic Council (NEC) meeting at PM office, in which enhancement of sanctioning powers of development fora of Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and FATA was approved.

During the meeting, it was announced that sanctioning limit for Development Working Party (DWP) of the three regions has been increased to Rs. 400.000 million, while the Development Committees (DC) would be authorised to sanction the development expenditure upto Rs. 1.000 billion.

The meeting was briefed on achievements made so far during the 11th Five Year Plan (2013-2018). Highlighting various achievements made during the period, it was informed that besides improved law & order and overall energy situation, 7653 MW have been added till December 2017 to the total installed capacity of 20,000 MW available in 2012-13.

It was further mentioned that 3,163 MW new capacity will be added by June 2018. Highest level of indigenous oil production at 100,698 bbls/day was witnessed as compared to 76,000 bbls/day in 2012-13.

Discussing the country’s total economic gains, it was informed that the average annual growth rate of GDP which stood at 3.0% in 2012-13 increased to around 5% with decade’s highest growth rate of 5.3% in 2016-17. Industrial out-put growth rate increased from 2.7 to 5.6% with 9 years highest industrial growth of 5.8% in 2015-16.

Growth rate of the manufacturing sector rose from 1.6 to 5.0% and the large scale manufacturing grew from 0.6 to 4.7%. The inflation rate which stood at an average of 12% was brought down to 5.2% during this period. The meeting was informed that early harvest projects of CPEC project were on track with 42 projects being implemented through PSDP 2017-18.