The World Bank's Country Director Patchamuthu's assessment of the Pakistan economy appears to be more in synch with the views of local economists as opposed to the government. He downgraded the growth rate of the economy to 4.5 percent in line with the International Monetary Fund's assessment, in contrast to the 5.5 percent budgeted by the government for the current year which was recently downgraded to 5 percent by the Finance Minister as a consequence of the failure to meet the cotton output target by 2 million bales.

This growth rate, the Country Director pointed out, trails behind other South Asian nations where the average is projected at 7 percent. The reason for our lower growth rate is, as per independent local economists, the inordinate focus of the Ministry of Finance on reducing the budget deficit. The decision of the Ministry of Finance, prompted by the IMF subsequent to taking the loan of 6.64 billion dollars in September 2013, was to bring the budget deficit to sustainable levels - from a high of nearly 8 percent in 2013, though part of the rise in the deficit is attributable to the then newly elected PML-N government to retire the inter-circular energy debt through borrowing, to around 5 percent last year. But, so argue local economists now that the deficit is sustainable the