Pakistan must continue its effort to mobilize resources and maintain financial discipline, the federal finance team must come up with home grown solutions to overcome the fiscal deficit.

Government should maintain financial discipline and ensure transparency in the budget monitoring and expenditure control system, Mahfooz Elahi, President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & industry (ICCI) made these remarks while meeting members of Taxation Sub-Committee of ICCI.

ICCI President was of the view that every political party in our present democratic set up should work jointly for improving the country’s economy by presenting a Bill for maintaining financial discipline and to regain macroeconomic stability.

If Pakistan would maintain financial discipline, it could reap the benefits of economic growth, investment, exchange rate stability and foreign exchange reserves, Elahi opinioned.

He said that financial discipline was essential for preventing debt crisis. Pakistan should pursue a sound fiscal policy and maintain financial discipline  through enactment of a Law  that could help in reducing current account deficit, ICCI President added. 

Elahi said that Pakistan was confronted with challenges like huge budget deficit, rising debt-servicing, uncontrollable debt burden, declining investment and rising unemployment. The only way Government could take the economy out of the current crisis was to maintain financial discipline, he emphasized.

The unchanged markup rate of 14 percent was not encouraging because industrial and corporate sectors were expecting reduction in the large rate to move the economy forward through industrialization and expressed that tight monetary policy was not a solution of economic problems, he maintained. 

He urged the government to formulate a sound fiscal and monetary policy for preventing macroeconomic imbalances and should realize the full growth potential.