ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday said that the government is focused on the 'higher growth of the economy.' 

"Our real objective should be higher growth because that only will push the economy in the right direction," Dar said while addressing a press conference in Islamabad.

The finance minister said that the government is focused on not losing the 6 percent growth target. 

"We have monitored, managed, and controlled expenditures to a large extent," Dar said. 

"As far as the economic indicators are concerned, inflation is contained and interest rates are lowest in decades," he said, adding that the inflation figures at the end of the fiscal year stood at 4.2 percent. 

He added that the energy sector had been ignored for more than a decade, with a circular debt standing at 503 billion rupees. 

"The infrastructure needed investment and the country was faced with a huge challenge in terms of security, which the government addressed," he said. 

"Some countries say that Pakistan is home to sanctuaries of certain terrorist organisations but these claims are completely false," he said, as he praised the Pakistani armed forces for doing a great job in improving the country's security situation.

He said that the circular debt has been brought under 400 billion rupees, and the load shedding has been reduced to a large extent as compared to the 18-hour outages in the past.  

"Even after curtailing the energy deficit and addressing the load shedding problem to a large extent, we have managed to bring down the circular debt," the minister said.