ISLAMABAD, April 24: President Gen Pervez Musharraf said here on Wednesday that certain constitutional amendments had been finalized to restructure the political setup.

“Political restructuring is necessary and that is why we have decided to propose constitutional amendments with a view to achieving political stability and economic revival, alleviating poverty, eliminating unemployment and promoting good governance,” he told a ‘Businessmen Convention’ organized by the Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“Here I would also like to assure you that economic reforms will continue beyond October 2002 to achieve a real turn around in economy”.

Gen Musharraf accused Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif of promoting uncertainty through whispering campaign and rumour-mongering. “Both the politicians sitting outside Pakistan are trying to destabilize the system,” he alleged.

The president said he was against confrontational politics and sincerely wanted the future political set-up to work and remove all kinds of uncertainties.

“I do not want to be the president through military solution as it would lead to clash between the president and the government. And in this situation, if the government is dismissed by the president as done in the past under the 8th Constitutional Amendment, this will not be in the national interest,” he said.

He claimed that the referendum would be acceptable to both Pakistanis and the outside world. “If I get elected in the referendum it will strengthen Pakistan and weaken its opponents,” he said, adding that referendum was an important step forward to regain “real democracy” as well as to ensure continuity and consistency of reforms.

Gen Musharraf assured the business community that all of their genuine problems would be resolved and that their recommendations would be looked into.

Nevertheless, he asked the businessmen to pay their taxes and make more investment. “We have offered enough incentives and at the same time we are assuring consistency in policies, especially to have more foreign investment in the country.”

The agriculture sector, information technology, SME and oil and gas sector were being given importance to check poverty and reduce unemployment, he pointed out.

“We have now control over fiscal deficit and that is why the inflation is today low while foreign exchange reserves are showing improvement.

“Similarly, foreign debt has been contained to $38 billion which was otherwise registering a $2 billion increase every year,” he said.

The president said that because of prudent financial policies expensive commercial debt had been reduced to a mere $600 million.

As for the domestic debt, he said that 15 per cent per annum growth was reversed to 6pc decline and added that the domestic debt which was 50pc of the GDP, had dropped to 45pc.

Exchange rate was stable and foreign remittances rose to $1.5 billion and were expected to touch the $2 billion mark by the end of the current fiscal.

He pointed out that despite Sept 11 events and internal factors the direct foreign investment had recorded an increase of 25pc, but still it needed to be1increased.

The president also called upon the business community to pay their due taxes in order to make available adequate funds for development, including to address the issues of poverty and unemployment. He was confident that under a good tax regime, rich people would be paying higher taxes.

He said he was aware of the price-hike but then hastened to add, “I would not like to address this problem by resorting to political gimmickry”. Prices, he stressed, could be controlled when there was a real economic revival.

Talking about the FPCCI’s demands, he said the audit period would be reduced from five to three years.

Ministers for finance, commerce, and information were present. All the chambers of commerce and industries, traders associations, industrialists, investors and businessmen from all the provinces attended the convention.