KARACHI: Pakistan’s budget deficit for the first three months of the 2010/11 fiscal year, which runs to next June, was 1.6 percent of gross domestic product, the Finance Ministry said on its web site on Wednesday.
This compared with a fiscal deficit of 1.5 per cent in the same period last year.
Pakistan announced last month a fiscal deficit of 4.7 per cent of GDP, agreed with the International Monetary Fund for fiscal year 2010/11 as part of an $11 billion bailout programme dating from 2008.
The original target of 4 per cent of GDP was revised following the devastating summer floods which cost around $10 billion in damages.
A widening in the fiscal deficit to 1.6 per cent of GDP in the first quarter, which ended Sept. 30, was a warning that Pakistan would likely overshoot the deficit target by the end of the fiscal year in June, analysts said. They forecast a budget deficit of at least 6 per cent of GDP.
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