Rana Muhammad Afzal (Coordinator to Prime Minister): For the sake of national interest, all political parties, which are in parliament or outside parliament, should sit together and be on the same page. But if any political party is adamant and does not want to talk to its political opponents and wants to talk to establishment, then such environment hampers the progress towards economic stability. On the floor of the house, the call of the PM for joining hands together by political parties for national interest was also rejected. All this is happening due to one political party. Despite that, the doors of the government always remain open for talks. No doubt if there is political instability in the country, then it has its political and economic repercussions. The government has anticipated such situations and will stop, through legal means, the acts of intentionally spreading political instability.

 In the context of economic situation, the government is heading in the right direction. The overall exports in July-August increased by 7.2 percent while inflation came down to 9.6 percent, the exchange rate has stabilized and the current account deficit has reached 0.2 billion dollar. The Moody’s also declared that Pakistan can handle the loan repayment issue in a better way. Our large scale manufacturing is increasing by 2.38 percent year on year basis in the month of July. There is positive growth in 14 sectors.

 Prime Minister, even in his internal meetings, reminds his team that we cannot go forward with getting loans for the country, we have to become self-sufficient in generating our own funds by increasing exports and we have to move our economic structure and framework towards positive current account surplus. If government achieves its economic goals and brings reforms in every field, then the present IMF programme can be the last.

Dr. Fatima Noor (Economist): Not going to IMF is a desire for the people and political leaders but to implement this, we have to take strict actions and steps. If we see what we could do in this regard then first we have to remember that we could not be a major industrial country nor we are good at industries like we used to be in 1960s. In such circumstances, first we need to convert our youth to human capital and secure the investments of the investors by overseeing and ensuring implementation of institutions like SIFC. We have to establish a system in which we could absorb the foreign investments and facilitate it in the country and use its technology to teach and prepare our coming generation for the global trends.

 Unfortunately we, like industry, have also ignored the agriculture despite that we are an agriculture country and 60 percent of our employment is engaged in agriculture sector. We did not facilitate and brought innovation in our agriculture sector which is facing problems like high energy cost for irrigation and non-availability of adequate quantity of fertilizers. There are many things that could be done but first we have to create an infrastructure to implement our economic goals and address all the issues hindering progress in this regard.