LAHORE
The quarterly survey conducted by ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and IMA (the Institute of Management Accountants), found economic outlook for Pakistan improving after a number of challenging years. According to the report, two main factors were to keep support growth over the next few years.
The survey released on Thursday, points out Chinese investment in infrastructure projects as the first factor to contribute in increasing its growth.
“All the projects added together, are expected to come to USD 62 billion, equivalent to 17 per cent of Pakistan’s 2015 GDP,” it mentioned adding that low-interest rates, which have been slashed over the past few years in response to a sharp fall in inflation, will also boost the growth.
The survey expected the global economic outlook to stay positive, despite a slight drop in confidence, compared to the last couple of years, according to the latest Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS).
The number of respondents that are expecting conditions to worsen, exceeds those expecting conditions to improve by 10 percentage points – yielding the second-highest confidence index in two years and better than the average since the survey began.
According to the survey, North America was the most confident region in quarter 2 of last fiscal year, followed closely by South Asia. Confidence levels are lowest in the Middle East.
The survey noted that confidence has fallen in both OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and non-OECD economies. Whereas, the confidence was witness higher in non-OECD economies than in OECD economies for only the second time since 2011.
Economic confidence in the UK has plummeted in the second quarter, due to political uncertainty, and is now at its lowest level since the final quarter of 2011, the survey notes.
ACCA’s senior business analyst Narayanan Vaidyanathan, says, ‘‘Healthy employment prospects in the US with reasonable real wage growth will help. Meanwhile, the Eurozone may benefit from easing austerity, and investor confidence after parties opposing the European Union failed to deliver in recent elections’’.
IMA Executive vice president, Raef Lawson says, ‘‘a combination of a gentler than expected slowdown in China and consumption growth driving recovery in the US and elsewhere has led to a fairly positive global outlook for this quarter.’’
