Dar says he had useful meetings with senior US officials

WASHINGTON : Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has described his meetings with senior US officials at which they discussed economic relations between the two countries as useful and productive.
“We discussed how the new government views the economic situation in Pakistan and the future roadmap to correct macro-economic balances” the meeting was very useful and friendly and in the broader sense we discussed bilateral issues mainly linked with the economic side,” he said Friday evening after meeting with Under Secretary of State Reuben Jaffery.
Dar, who is leading a team of the country’s top economic managers to the annual World Bank-IMF spring gatherings, earlier had meetings with Deputy Secretary Treasury Robert Kimmit and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Sullivan.
“These are routine meetings, since we are in the town, obviously when you meet, you discuss economic ties,” Dar added.
Jaffery, who is Under Secretary of Economic, Energy and Agriculture Affairs Jaffery echoed Dar’s views, calling their discussion as very constructive.
“We had a very constructive meeting, we discussed a broad array of
financial and market issues and the challenges the Minister and his countrymen
face and the US support for the government in helping to address those challenges
in the months to come,” the senior US official said.
Meanwhile, responding to questions from the media representatives at the
end of his hectic schedule of engagements on Friday, Dar said the new government
has already started making efforts to damage control the economic situation with
reference to inflation it has inherited. He was confident of achieving
improvement in the current fiscal year as the numbers have been shared with the media and the public.
“If we do not take the corrective actions, it would be unbearable, the fiscal deficit of 9 and 9.5 per cent roughly, so we will have to bring it down to below 7 per cent.”
In answer to another question the finance minister said the new
government has shared with the public the situation of the economy it has
inherited. “There is no blame game, I gave numbers of what I have inherited on
the budget overrun, they are substantiated—in fact, we are going to just place
it in both the Houses of the Parliament - they will be referred to the Finance Committees, which will provide an equal opportunity to the previous regime team to come and defend.”
He said the previous government “should have allowed to make necessary fiscal and monetary adjustments where those were necessary” in the light of circumstances prevailing both domestically and globally. “But due to political expediency in the election year, they did not do it.”