The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry has called upon the government to formulate a comprehensive new strategy to cope with the rising fiscal deficit that has surged to Rs3.445trillion or 8.9 percent of GDP by the end of June 2019 as the rising deficit would further weaken the economy, cause serious recession in business sector and bring more miseries to the common man. Ahmed Hassan Moughal President, Rafat Farid Senior Vice President and Iftikhar Anwar Sethi Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry in their joint statement said that the government had announced to keep the deficit at 7.1 percent of GDP, whereas its target at the start of the year was set at 4.9 percent. However, all the major fiscal indicators both on expenditure and revenue sides showed deterioration over the outgoing fiscal on June 30, 2019, which showed that government could not be able to set its fiscal affairs in the right direction during its first year. They said that the fiscal deficit witnessed a record jump despite a 45 percent lower development spending during fiscal year 2018-19 compared to a previous year, which should be a cause of concern for the policymakers. Ahmed Hassan Moughal said that government has also increased key policy rate by around 77 percent during its first year as the policy rate has risen from 7.5 percent at the start of PTI government to 13.25 percent in August 2019. He said that rupee value has also sharply declined against dollar and both these developments have contributed to higher mark-up costs. He said that with sharp rise in interest rate, borrowing cost for private sector from banks have increased manifold due to which entrepreneurs were facing great problems in expanding existing businesses and starting new ventures. He said the surge in interest rates and devaluation of rupee have also caused record high inflation for common man making his lives more miserable. ICCI President said that if government was serious in reviving economy, it should reduce interest rate to provide easy credit to private sector. It would bring multiple benefits to the economy as it would reduce inflation, improve purchasing power of consumers, facilitate the growth of business activities, increase tax revenue for the government and decrease fiscal deficit as well.