Areas with no direct link to human beings: economy unable to creat new job opportunities: I A Rehman

Human rights activist I A Rehman has said that the budget documents for the fiscal year 2016-17 has shown improvement in the areas where it has no direct link to human beings. "Agriculture growth is in negative and a volume of country's trade is not taking place within the region," he added.
He was speaking at a programme 'economy watch' arranged by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) where Nadia Tahir and Wasim Saleem presented a paper on the federal and provincial budgets from the human rights perspective. He said Pakistan was carrying a substantial trade imbalance with the countries in the region which demands more focus of the economic managers of the country.
Rehman further pointed out that the economy was unable to create job opportunities despite showing a growth trend over the last three years. "The fate of labour class in the economy is a cause of concern for the human rights activist," he stressed. Nadia Tahir made a detailed presentation to the participants of the programme and highlighted the grey areas of the budget, saying the commodities sector has registered a downward trend while the services sector has remained static and failed to get consolidated with little contribution to revenue generation.
"There is no growth in 70 percent sectors of the economy while the remaining 30 percent sectors have negligible share in the gross development production," she added. She further made a point that the construction sector development had little impact on the growth of houses which suggests a big disconnect between different sectors of economy.
She said the public sector has remained flat while the private sector is by and large inactive because the government is the biggest borrower of bank loans, leaving very little space for the private sector to avail loans to grow. "Banks are also discouraging private sector on loan disbursements as they take it easy to make money by offering loans to the government," she added. She said revenue generation through withholding tax has resulted into 24 percent increase in money circulation. Overall, she added, the economy has produced low growth, high inflation and revenue generation through indirect taxes. She emphasised that the power sector growth has no connection with the environment priorities.
"In provincial budgets, humans are not being prioritised in the strategies of policymakers," she said. She said the education expenditure continues to hover around two percent and the health expenditure is less than one percent of GDP. Also, she added, the share of expenditure on food security in the budget has been declining and the ratio of expenditure on human security to national security is too low to take care of the felt needs of the population.