ISLAMABAD, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its annual Middle East and Central Asia Regional Economic Outlook report in Washington on Tuesday.
The IMF report urged the Pakistani government to take full advantage of the global economic recovery by opting for bilateral and multilateral trade agreements to boost its exports and economic growth.
"Participation in trade agreements - multilateral, regional, and bilateral - can play an important role in fostering more open trade in Pakistan," the IMF report mentioned.
The report argued that an uptick in Pakistan's exports during the first half of 2017 helped strengthen the country's economic activity.
It also acknowledged a visible improvement in quality standards of Pakistan's apparel production in recent years.
Apparel is an important value-added subsector of textile, which earns Pakistan over 60 percent of its annual exports worth 20 billion U.S. dollars.
The IMF believed that the positive spillovers from the stronger global economy would help Pakistan's external balance of payment despite the rising current account deficit which stood at 4.9 percent in FY18 as against 4 percent in FY17 and 1.7 percent in FY16.
It underlined that the agricultural activity in Pakistan stays heavily dependent on weather and price developments in the country, therefore a pickup in commodity prices will help improve the country's terms of trade, with a special focus on cotton.
Talking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the IMF report stated that the investment under the project was strengthening credit growth. It went on to predict that Pakistan's real GDP growth is at 5.6 percent in 2018.
The report said the expected spike in public investment will build the envisaged firming of medium-term growth.
The fund projected Pakistan's fiscal deficit at 5.4 percent in 2018 as against 5.7 percent in 2017 and 4.4 percent in 2016.
