Islamabad: The government’s general debt indicators have declined from 88% to 84.7% of GDP — after accounting for international guarantees and the funds borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a news source reported.
According to the information available, a recently published IMF report noted that the decline came about as a result of some of the government’s smart initiatives which helped reduce expenditure, brought about a budget surplus, and raised the tax and non-tax revenue during the first five months of this fiscal year.
The government also improved on budget execution in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2019-20, registering a surplus of 0.6% of the GDP and an overall deficit of 0.6%; nearly 1% of the GDP better than programmed.
This state of affairs came about as a result of the expected non-tax revenues and the double-digit growth in tax revenue net of refunds.
However, the IMF report did note that in FY19, the budget registered a primary deficit of 3.5% of the GDP and an overall deficit of 8.9%, against its target of 1.8% and 7%, respectively.
The revenue collection at the federal level was also relatively low, at just 2% of the GDP. This was lower than expected, although the total expenditure and provincial fiscal balances were recorded at being on their expected levels.
