The sources said that the PBS management succumbed to the pressure and agreed to show a nominally positive growth rate of 0.3%. The glaring contradiction has also put a question mark over the credibility of the official economic growth rate of 0.29%, which the NAC approved on Wednesday. The NAC approved the provisional economic growth rate on the basis of mere one presentation and that, too, without having the working paper on the table. The chief statistician also did not respond to a question about the factors that led to changing negative 0.5% growth to positive 0.3% growth rate. The growth in the other services is shown higher than last year which is anomalous as most of it has a fixed growth rate of base year.

Source: The Express Tribune May 26, 2023 10:50 UTC