Economic issues not emerged within days: Naveed

30 Aug, 2008

Federal Minister for Finance, Investment and Privatisation Syed Naveed Qamar has said that issues relating to economy of the country have not emerged within days as they have been indicated for a long time, immediate measures are required to cope with such situation and they have also taken a number of measures in this connection.
Talking to a private news channel he said that some of the indications also show positive development despite economy crisis as tax collection, remittance have been all time high during June and there was pressure on our foreign reserves due to the higher oil prices at international markets and government also increased custom duties on few items in finance bill to increase revenue collection.
To a question he said that they will launch our bond with new instruments, then they have our own number of programmes so they will not have to go to IMF for support of our programmes.
To yet another question he told that the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has taken up issue of oil procurement pacts with Saudi authorities recently and new packages of agreement are imminent in the coming days, adding that they will float our remittance based bond worth of 800 million dollars in Middle East and other international monetary markets.
He highlighted that market is reading political situation wrongly as same ruling party is going to the presidency in the presidential election and there will be no political confusion after presidential election.
When asked about the incentives given by the government he replied that they have given incentives to farmers and more incentives are expected in September as agriculture has not shown the desired performance. Subsidies are continuing on electricity tariffs for tube wells, fertilisers and removed taxes from pesticides.

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