Economic indicators suggest country's economy thriving

Despite several challenges including ongoing war on terror, the country's economy is performing well and has been gradually moving towards developing itself on sound and sustainable basis, the economic indicators suggest. Not only the country's foreign exchange reserves have increased to $15.202 billion during the week that ended on January 9, 2010, but also the other indicators have shown considerable positive growth for last one and a half-year.
The inflation has eased as low as 10.31 percent in July-January 2010 as against the level of 24.43 percent recorded during the same period of last year, according to Federal Bureau of Statistics. Overall Imports into the country during July-December (2009-10) declined by 16.34 percent, resulting in narrowing the trade deficit by 29.44 during the period.
Imports during the first half of current financial year were recorded at $15.994 billion as against the imports of $19.117 billion during July-December (2008-09), the FBS figures revealed. The overall trade deficit during July-December was recorded at $6.803 billion as against the trade deficit of $9.642 billion recorded during same period of last year, showing a negative growth of 29.44 percent, the figures revealed.
The government has already launched 'Strategic Trade Policy framework 2009-12', setting out the policy guidelines and identifying the principal action areas. It has set the export growth target of 6 percent for the current fiscal year, 10 percent for the next fiscal year and the export growth target for the year 2011-12 has been set at 13 percent. The overseas workers' remittances amounted to $3,832.6 million in July-November 2009-10 as against $2,966.5 million, showing an increase of 29.2 percent over the same period of last year.
The Federal Bureau of Statistics' tax collections stood at Rs 579.5 billion on net basis during July-December 2009-10 as compared to $553.8 billion recorded during the same period of last year, thereby posting an increase of 4.6 percent. The Large-scale Manufacturing has registered a positive growth of 0.67 percent during July-October 2009-10 against the same period of last year.