Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar has said that the improvement in the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) economic growth forecast is due to robust growth in the industry.

“Economic growth forecast raised by SBP due to robust growth in industry,” said Azhar, after the central bank announced to keep the policy rate unchanged at 7 percent at its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

It is pertinent to mention that the MPC noted that since the last meeting in January, growth, and employment have continued to recover and business sentiment has further improved. While still modest, at around 3 percent, growth in FY21 is now projected to be higher than previously anticipated due to improved prospects for manufacturing and reflecting in part the monetary and fiscal stimulus provided during Covid, stated MPC.

The minister stated that a number of measures have been taken in the last 2 months including the announcement of industrial energy package, SME energy payments, SBP’s TERF facility, and payroll financing, reductions in input duty, the announcement of construction package, and EV policy for mobile manufacturing. Hammad added that many more initiatives are in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, Large Scale Manufacturing Index (LSMI) output increased by 9.13 percent to 175.15 points for January 2021 as compared to the same month 2020, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed on Tuesday.

According to provisional Quantum Index Numbers (QIM) of Large Scale Manufacturing Industries, the LSMI output increased by 5.36pc when compared to December 2020. Whereas, the overall output of LSMI increased by 7.85pc for July-January 2020-21 as compared to July-January 2019-20.