He termed the next budget as pro-poor and assured immediate relief to the low-income group and underprivileged section of the society.
The prime minister was speaking at a pre budget briefing held here. Minister for information, Muhammad Ali Durrani, and state minister for Information, Tariq Azim, were accompanying him.
He said the Fiscal Responsibility Law was an effective tool to check that the public debt was well within the specific limit at any point in time or not.
He deplored that the past governments did not put in place any such law to have a check on them and it encouraged them to take debt at hard conditions and subsequently damaged Pakistan's image.
He said the government took a number of steps during the last few years to improve its image in this area. He said the Fiscal Responsibility Law will protect the future generation from debt burden.
Shaukat Aziz said that the government was fully aware of the problems of the poor people and low-income group and going to take a number of steps in the next budget for their immediate relief. He hinted at subsidy on essential items in the next budget to cut down their prices in the open market, besides increasing supply through different sources to dispel the impression of shortage.
He said the government took bold decision to check high prices of cement through import and it worked well and the same policy was being actively followed in the case of sugar. He said the government was establishing an authority to check monopoly and exploitation by the few.
The prime minister added that the government will keep on following three basic fundamentals-deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation-for its economic policy. He said the continuity of the policies will help the government sustain economic growth rate, besides addressing key issues relating to social sector development, poverty, unemployment, price-hike.
He added that the government was taking a number of initiatives in the budget to create more jobs for unemployed.
He told a questioner that the government will spend huge funds on vocational training programme to improve professional skill of labour and less educated people. He maintained that a mismatch existed in skilled labour and unemployed people and it needed extensive training programme for improvement in this basic area.
He hinted at increasing pensions and salaries of the government employees in the budget for immediate relief. He said the government would spend billions of rupee in the next fiscal year for safe drinking water scheme and other basic facilities to improve living standard of the common man.
The prime minister said the government will take all possible steps to ensure food security, besides creating maximum number of jobs for unemployed in the next fiscal year. He said KESC has a long-term programme to address the issue of loadshedding in Karachi.