He, however, said that subsidy on diesel was over and in the next fortnight there was possibility of further decline in petrol prices. After the meeting, Naveed told reporters that a meeting of National Finance Commission (NFC) would be held after Eid-ul-Fitr, in October.
When his attention was drawn towards freezing of index in the stock market, he said that if this decision had not been taken, a number of brokers would have been rendered bankrupt.
Regarding borrowing by the government to reduce budget deficit, he said that the government had decided to either return the loans by September 30 or bring them at minimum level. Apprising the business community about the government's economic policies, Naveed said there was no possibility of giving incentives in bank loans on mark-up and taxes till hard time on country's economy was over.
He thanked the business community for its co-operation and said that the government did not have any fiscal space for offering any tax relief to the business community. "We have to slash expenditures from development side and various other heads to keep on moving ahead", he said. He said that the federal government would announce wheat support price this month in a bid to get a bumper crop.
He said that the government would soon announce the Energy Policy. In order to overcome existing energy crisis, the government will set up plants to produce 1500 MW of electricity. Apart from producing electricity through oil, resources of coal, hydel and wind power would be used. He said that energy crises and decrease in foreign reserves are among the big challenges faced by the country and the government is paying attention to resolve them with sincerity and commitment.
He said that apart from exploring new opportunities of increasing gas and power supplies, efficient use of energy resources was also being made. He further said that the country's economy was facing serious problems, which cannot be redressed without passing through the difficult period. Therefore, the nation will have to take the 'bitter pill' to cure it.
The national economy is perhaps facing worst period of its history and there will be need of a 'major surgery' to cure the cancer faced by the economy, he said. Everyone has to make a positive contribution to streamline the things and hopefully the critical phase of economy will be over with in months and not in years.
Naveed also said that political and economic stability are inter-linked and with political stability there will be increase in local and foreign investment in the country. He said that the banking sector would also have to play its role in mitigating sufferings of the economy.
Punjab Finance Minister Tanvir Ashraf Kaira, a former FPCCI chief Iftikhar Ali, Vice-President of FPCCI Zubair Tufail, FPCCI Zonal Chief and Vice-President Azhar Saeed Butt, Shehzad Malik, Akber Sheikh, Aftab Barlas, and Asif Mahmood also addressed the meeting and highlighted issues confronted by the business community.
Representatives of business community said that battered economy, declining foreign exchange reserves, depreciating in rupee, poor conditions of capital market, rising prices of utilities and food items, shortage of energy, water and eatables were badly hitting the country's economy. They apprised the minister of the issues faced by the business community and suggested measures to tackle these problems.
Iftikhar said high prices of petrol and gas, high transportation charges, widening trade deficit, increasing budget deficit, flight of capital, negligible inflow of foreign investment and global inflation has crushed the industry and exports.
He said that agricultural sector was infested with water shortage, high cost of fertiliser, insecticides and pesticides, low yields of cash crops and high cost of running tubewells are resulting in shortage of wheat, cotton, grain crops and oil seeds.
He said water shortage was badly damaging agriculture sector performance. Therefore, dams, which already have feasibility reports, or small dams be immediately constructed to meet the present and future shortage of water. Azhar Saeed Butt said that projects of generating power through use of coal must be started on war footing basis.