Govt uplifted the ailing economy, put it on growth path, Hammad Azhar.

Islamabad -- Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Muhamamd Hammad Azhar Tuesday said the incumbent government not only uplifted the ailing economy but also virtually put it on growth path as clearly indicated by various economic indicators.

Addressing a press conference here, he said now, the economy had started picking up as economic indicators including investment inflows, foreign exchange reserves, revenue collection, current account balance, trade balance, ease of doing business, Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) spending, Stock Exchange performance and inflation were showing positive developments.

Giving break-up of performance of various economic indicators, he said the current account deficit in dollar terms came down by 64% during the first quarter of current fiscal year compared to the reduction of 32% during the corresponding period of last year.

The fiscal deficit reduced by 1.4% in first quarter of financial year 2019-20, whereas it witnessed about 0.4% reduction on year-on-year basis, adding primary budget in first three months was in surplus by Rs285 billion.

Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investment, which was flowing out for last three years, grew by $350 million, showing growth of 137 percent.

Hammad Azhar said foreign exchange reserves, which were constantly reducing by $500 million per month since 2017, however, it was stabilized since January 2019 despite the fact that the government had made record debt payments to debt servicing amounting to around $10 billion.

On revenue front, he said number of tax filers increased by 55% as the domestic revenues had increased by 25 percent during the four months, adding there had been growth of 15 percent in overall revenues despite the fact that imports into the country were on decreasing trend.

He said the government had achieved 90 percent revenue collection target set for the first quarter by collecting Rs960 billion taxes.

The minister said circular debt, which had mounted to Rs1,200 billion from Rs450 billion, mainly during the previous government's last couple of...