KARACHI: Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum President Mian Zahid Hussain has said that implementation of housing projects recently announced by the government will inject a new life into the cement and steel industry while reduced interest rates will boost automobile and other sectors.

He said that the situation was very different in Pakistan where the corona-related losses were not very high, and now the situation was improving, resulting in improved confidence among investors.

He said that the government had predicted a 7.78 percent fall in the large-scale manufacturing sector during last fiscal, but it could instead jump to 10.43 percent as data was being awaited for this sector.

Now large-scale manufacturing was improving as yarn, clothing, iron and steel, cement, petroleum and auto sectors had been reporting improvement in production. He said that though the impact of the virus in Pakistan was receding, yet it was in full swing in many developed nations which were considered to be very important for the global economic system.

He expressed his apprehensions that the world might be heading towards an economic collapse. Globally, around 35 percent businesses would go bankrupt due to the pandemic which would be a great challenge to the world economy, he said.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that it had been estimated that despite spending trillions of dollars, 57 percent of US companies would become insolvent sooner or later. The US would be followed by Brazil where 45 percent of companies would be closed down, and 43 percent of companies in the UK would become non-existent while 41 percent of companies in Spain and 20 percent of companies in China would be out of business in 2020 and 2021.

He noted that reduced interest rates, packages and incentives would not change the situation which needed out-of-the-box solutions or the economy of the developed nations would suffer, leading to a global crisis.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020