Pakistan 2009 growth will be slowest in decade: AFP

KARACHI (AFP) — Pakistan's economic growth for the fiscal year ending June 30 will be the slowest in more than a decade, beset by the global recession and a manufacturing slump, officials and analysts say.

Gross domestic product (GDP) will slow to 2.37 percent, Pakistan's National Accounts Committee recently estimated, revising downwards the year's target growth of 2.5 percent.

But a senior finance ministry official warned GDP could be as little as 2.1 percent, saying the committee did not take into account the plummeting fortunes of the manufacturing sector.

"The accounts committee will calculate it again while considering the manufacturing sector's growth and all other things," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Either way, it will be the worst recorded GDP growth since financial year 1997-98 when the State Bank of Pakistan put the rate at 1.9 percent.

The bleak economic news comes with the military bogged down in an offensive against the Taliban in the country's northwest, under huge US pressure to crush militants whom Washington has branded the greatest terror threat to the West.

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