t
dependence on foreign labor, the government is encouraging the
replacement of foreign expatriate workers with local workers. Oman
actively seeks private foreign investors, especially in the
industrial, information technology, tourism, and higher education
fields. Industrial development plans focus on gas resources, metal
manufacturing, petrochemicals, and international transshipment ports.

Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is a major contributor to the world
economy and particularly to those nations its waters directly touch.
It provides low-cost sea transportation between East and West,
extensive fishing grounds, offshore oil and gas fields, minerals,
and sand and gravel for the construction industry. In 1996, over 60%
of the world's fish catch came from the Pacific Ocean. Exploitation
of offshore oil and gas reserves is playing an ever-increasing role
in the energy supplies of the US, Australia, NZ, China, and Peru.
The high cost of recovering offshore oil and gas, combined with the
wide swings in world prices for oil since 1985, has led to
fluctuations in new drillings.

Pakistan
Pakistan, an impoverished and underdeveloped country, has
suffered from decades of internal political disputes, low levels of
foreign investment, and a costly, ongoing confrontation with
neighboring India. However, IMF-approved government policies,
bolstered by generous foreign assistance and renewed access to
global markets since 2001, have generated solid macroeconomic
recovery the last five years. The government has made substantial
macroeconomic reforms since 2000, most notably privatizing the
banking sector. Poverty levels have decreased by 10 percent since
2001, and Islamabad has steadily raised development spending in
recent years, including a 52-percent real increase in the budget
allocation for development in fiscal year 2007, a necessary step
toward reversing the broad underdevelopment of its social sector.
The fiscal deficit - the result of chronically low tax collection
and increased spending, including reconstruction costs from the
October 2005 earthquake - appears manageable for now. GDP growth,
spurred by gains in the industrial and service sectors, remained in
the 6-8% range in 2004-06. Inflation remains the biggest threat to
the economy, jumping to more than 9% in 2005 before easing to 7.9%
in 2006. The central bank is pursuing tighter monetary po