Govt turns cautious on economic recovery optimism

Expre­ssing concerns over cotton production and confusing signals from the manufacturing sector, the government expressed “cautious optimism” on Wednesday about sustainable economic recovery and a further deceleration in inflation. “Inflation will remain within the range of 6-7 per cent in October and further down to 5.5-6.5pc in Nove­mber,” said the Mini­s­try of Finance (MoF) in its Mont­hly Economic Update and Outlook for October. It said the country’s economy demonstrated sustai­ned recovery during the first quarter of FY25. “Stab­ility in both the fiscal and external sectors has be­en maintained, suppor­ted by significant financial infl­o­ws”, said the MoF while poi­nting out the disbursement of the first tran­che of $1.03 billion under the Extended Fund Faci­lity (EFF) programme of the Int­e­rnational Monetary Fund.