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CE calls for speedy

privatisation to get

rid of debt burden

ISLAMABAD: Describing debt burden as "the major problem facing the country", the Chief Executive, General Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday called for a speedy privatisation process to generate resources for retiring country's debt obligations.

"The bigger problem was to lower the debt burden which was greatly limiting the ability of the government to provide any relief to the weaker sections of the population," he told the members of the Economic Advisory Board (EAB) at a luncheon meeting here.

He was of the view that privatisation will have to proceed at a fast pace so that necessary resources could be raised for debt retirement.

Musharraf said his government was committed to economic revival, and the plan he announced on December 15 last was "the basic road map for this purpose."

This plan was now put into action, he said and added that a number of measures had already been taken and work was underway on a number of additional measures that would be taken at the time of the budget.

The Chief Executive told the EAB members that he was closely monitoring the progress of the programme and would continue to do so in the future also.

He said for the revival of growth, the government was focusing on four sectors, namely agriculture, small and medium industry, oil and gas and information technology and software.

"The agriculture is coming up to our expectation and the need is to sustain the momentum by taking measures that would ensure significant investment in non-farm sector and promotion of agriculture based exports," said the Chief Executive.

In the oil and gas sector, the potential was vast as the proven reserves of gas, after development, could save significant amount of costly imports of fuel oil.

He expressed the hope that government's efforts to discover additional reserves off-shore would soon bear fruits.

He underlined the need for making concerted efforts in exports expansion to ease the problem of trade account. In this regard, he particularly noted that the above sectors would lead to export expansion and minimise dependence on imports.

Besides, these sector represented great potential for employment generation, he stated.

The Chief Executive also pointed out that the government was committed to eliminate waste, practise austerity and cut back on all its non-development expenditures.

On the revenue side, hesaid that the government wanted to reduce the number of taxes, reduce the tax rates and broaden the base.

However, he pointed out, for this purpose, it was necessary that documentation was done at all levels of the economic activity.

The Chief Executive also noted that the focus of economic revival plan was on poverty reduction and a number of programmes had been planned for this purpose including the integrated small public works programme in both rural and urban areas with an initial allocation of Rs 15 billion.

He said another programme would be the food support programme to help the poorest people. The micro finance bank will also help in the objective of poverty reduction.

The Chief Executive said the problem of governance cannot be fully resolved unless the resources required for this purpose were made available and people had a feeling of participation in the process of economic development.

He thanked the members of the Board for helping the government in its efforts to revive the economy. General Musharraf said, he would continue to look forward to the recommendations of the Board in future as well.ÑAPP