Performance targets for key ministries: Commerce Ministry selected for next fiscal year

The government has decided to set performance targets for various ministries and Ministry of Water and Power, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), and Commerce Ministry have been selected for this purpose for next fiscal year, it was learnt.
Sources said that the high ups of Finance Ministry informed the parliamentarians during the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance that government has decided to go for result-based management by selecting three pilot ministries, including water and power, FBR and commerce from the next fiscal year.
The official said that the next meeting of the Federal Cabinet would approve budget strategy papers. An official said that the ministries had been selected because of their great impact on the economic and social life of the common man. Officials of the Finance Ministry reportedly stated that mobilising domestic resources through tax policy and administration reforms would be the priority for the next fiscal year''s budget.
The meeting was informed that the restructuring process of Public Sector Enterprises (PSE) would be accelerated and in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), energy sector and infrastructure development would be given a high priority. Public-Private partnerships would be supported to improve PSEs performance. The meeting was informed that tax collection during the first ten months stood at Rs 1,416 billion against Rs 1,150 billion for the same period last year and large-scale manufacturing growth for the period was recorded at 1.8 percent against negative 0.5 per cent for the same period last year.
The country''s foreign exchange reserves decreased to $16.4 billion during July 2011-April 2012 from $17.3 billion for the same period of last year. Secretary Finance Abdul Wajid Rana, adviser to the Ministry of Finance Rana Asad Amin and the Chairman FBR maintained that the budget for the next year would focus on consolidating macroeconomic stability, accelerating growth and employment, and continue making efforts to tame the inflation.