Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The government of PML(N) is facing constraints to achieve several economic targets in the third consecutive year of its government. Unreal economic targets had been fixed in the budget due to the IMF programme but later on, these targets were not achieved. The same situation had been witnessed in the previous two years.

In the budget of the current fiscal year 2016-17, the target of GDP has been fixed as 5.5 per cent but as per IMF the ratio of GDP will remain 4.5 per cent.

The Finance Minister in his budget speech of 2013-14 had claimed to take the ratio of GDP by seven per cent but the government has failed to achieve this target and the current ratio of GDP is approximately 4.3 per cent. In the current fiscal year, despite an expected failure in the ratio of GDP, the government has decided to fix the ratio of GDP as six per cent. Similarly, the target of agricultural development has been fixed as 3.9 per cent. However, due to a decline in the production of cotton by 44 per cent, it is not possible to achieve the target of agricultural development. The target of exports has been fixed as 25 billion and 500 million US dollars, but this target will not be achieved because in the first ten months of the current fiscal year, the volume of exports remained 17 billion. The government has given the target of revenue collection to FBR, which is approximately Rs 3104. However, by May 15, an amount of Rs 2240 billion was collected. It will be a miracle to achieve the remaining target of tax collection i.e Rs 664 billion.