Pakistan stock market at highest level: M. Aurangzeb

Islamabad: The federal finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said that Pakistan stock market is at the highest level in history, which has increased in foreign exchange reserves. This market has not increased by date stocks, but by market operations.

Addressing an event in Islamabad, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb stated that foreign exchange reserves will reach 9 to 10 billion dollars by June.

He added that the final installment by International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be released later this week. If there is an IMF loan program, there is no plan B.

The finance minister continued to say that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of agriculture is increasing by 5% and we have also produced more crops.

He further said that they want to stabilize the economy, the tax share in the economy is nine percent, which is the lowest in the region. There is a need for reforms in the energy sector, serious efforts must be made to reduce energy losses.

The Federal Minister also stated that it is a good place where we are now, the financial institution is called 'Lender of the Last Resort' for a reason, this program has helped in creating macroeconomic stability.

Mohammad Aurangzeb further added: ‘We requested the IMF to issue a long-term program because the first reason was that we wanted to maintain macroeconomic stability and the second was the implementation of the structural reform agenda. The country does not need a policy, we don't need to know why or what, but we need to work on it and be resilient’.

The federal minister said that the government's job is not to do business, therefore he asked all the ministries to take the government institutions towards privatization. Adding non-tax payers or low tax payers to the net, which is the implementation aspect is very important, we have to get the implementation components right.

“As a country, it is important to take timely decisions and implement them. Someone told me that why don't you talk to the Chief Justice, I will talk to him when it is his matter, but this matter is for the executive. We have requested the tribunals to decide in the next 3-4 months and we will also replace the people in these tribunals,” stated the minister.

He also said that we will have to go in consultation with the provinces to bring people into the tax net. We will try to get their help in this regard, we want to speed up privatization. It is known that what they are going to do now, they are not going to do anything, this is Pakistan's program, nobody is doing anything to us.

He said that we had very good discussions in Washington, the nature of the new program will be discussed when the mission comes to Pakistan, we hope that we will make an agreement at the end of June or July.