Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: As the fiscal year 2015-16 is going to close today the Pakistan Muslim League (N) government under the leadership of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has failed to achieve all its financial targets.

The government has failed to achieve the annual growth rate , export, investment to GDP ratio, agriculture growth, FBR revenue and others in the outgoing year. According to economic indicators available with Daily Times, the federal finance minister despite great efforts failed to achieve most of the said targets. The agriculture growth target remained at 0.19 per cent against the target of 3.9 because of 28 per cent decrease in the cotton crop resulting in the sector’s contribution to the GDP shrinking to 20.5 per cent.

The finance minister in his budget speech of 2013-14 had said to take the GDP ratio by seven per cent but the government failed to achieve this target in 2016 as well. The current growth rate target was recorded as 4.7 per cent against the target of 6 per cent.

The growth rate target for the next fiscal year has been fixed as 5.5 per cent and once again the finance minister has vowed to take it to seven per cent in the medium term framework. Similarly, the export target had been set as 25 billion dollars for the current year 2015-16, but this target could not be achieved. According to the Secretary Commerce Azmat Ali Ranjha the export target for 2015-16 will remain at 21 billion dollars.

While the government achieved the industrial growth output target of 6.8 per cent, large-scale manufacturing stood at 4.6 per cent, well below the official target. Small-scale manufacturing grew to 8.2 per cent, slaughtering sector 3.6 per cent, electricity generation and distribution 12.1 per cent, mining and quarrying 6.8 per cent, and construction grew to 13 per cent. The services sector, which accounts for more than half the economy, grew by 5.7 per cent.

According to an FBR official the revenue the FBR is struggling hard to obtain the Rs 3104 billion revenue collection target. The target will be met this year. If the FBR collects this then this will be for the first time in Pakistan’s history that the FBR meets its target. The finance minister in his budget speech on June 3 in announced a medium term macro-economic framework in which government hadset the GDP growth to gradually rise to seven per cent by the FY2018-19. Inflation would be contained to a single digit, Investment to the GDP ratio will rise to 21 per cent at the end of the medium term and the fiscal deficit would be brought to down to 3.5 per cent of the GDP and the tax to GDP ratio would be increased to 13.9 per cent.