Economist Dr Akmal Hussain has suggested that the government should float bonds worth dollar five billion on the international market to tackle the problem of circular debt which is root cause of power crisis in the country. While addressing the post-budget seminar here at South Asian Free Media Association (Safma) on Saturday Akmal said, "We are facing decline of six percent in GDP due to power crisis. We have to take tough decisions to put the economy on the right path."
Akmal said in the past five years GDP growth rate had fallen from five percent to two percent, adding that in the past five years, the government had spent heavily on non-productive side which had created a lot of problems. He was of the view that everywhere in the world budget deficit existed but it was due to the spending on productive side and it was easy to recover the deficit occurred due to spending on productive side.
Regarding federal budget 2013-14, Akmal termed it a good budget in present tough conditions, and appreciated the increase of development budget by 38 percent. He suggested "government should privatise organisations like PIA and steel mills in which we are wasting 450 billion of rupees" adding those organisations should be privatised after structural reforms which would be helpful in reducing the budget deficit.
Akmal said the government should come out of the business of commodity trading because no government in the world was involved in trading business of commodity. He said every year government blocked 450 billions of rupees in the trading of wheat and rice. He suggested that government should take practical steps to implement agriculture tax because agriculture income which was a large part of our economy was out of tax net.
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