PM's Finance Adviser Shaukat Tarin says that the economy has entered safe territory. Is that true? Though one is usually cynical over official proclamations of success, especially in matters economic, should we concede that the PPP-led coalition is not faring too badly on this front? For that answer, we have to start looking at what conditions the government has had to work with, both within the country and without. We had a severe fiscal space problem with the government unable to even undertake its debt servicing. The prospect of default loomed large. The government needed money fast. Though it could not get any from the cheekily named Friends of Pakistan, it managed to get a series of loans from several international financial institutions. This meant going back to the International Monetary Fund, which is the largest donor amongst the ones mentioned earlier. But the government has showed a measure of independence when it reiterates its decision to convince the Fund of the need to lower interest rates. The higher interest rates also seem to have dragged down inflation a bit as well. This does not by any means imply that the work is done, or that it has even begun. We need to get a growth rate of more than 7 per cent to keep us in the green. And this growth should be the sort that yields more employment opportunities, rather than the forays in financial economics and speculation that the Shaukat Aziz regime employed.