The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) regime’s record financial blunders have pushed the country’s economy into the red zone, one step away from irreversible bankruptcy, which will result in total surrender of Pakistan’s sovereignty and its strategic assets.
In a press conference, the party’s senior central leadership pointed out that instead of huddling to address this alarming disaster in the waiting, PTI was mobilising its joker-like ministers to juggle fake allegation on PML-N leaders to take attention away from the danger at hand.
Senior central leader and former planning minister Ahsan Iqbal, former Sindh governor Muhammad Zubair and PML-N Secretary Information Marriyum Aurangzeb, while talking to the media at the National Press Club Islamabad, said that the PTI regime should resign in national interest because country “cannot sustain another similar devastating fiscal quarter”.
Ahsan Iqbal said that any economy has three major indicators which identify its health and direction. He pointed out that growth rate, fiscal deficit and inflation are these key areas and PTI had not just failed at sustaining previous numbers but has caused record degradation in all three. Ahsan told the press that it is largely unprecedented that any country’s growth rate plummets over three percent in a single year from 5.8 to below 2.5 which the PTI managed to do.
He said the situation of the fiscal deficit was equally alarming as it grew by a 3.9 percent over a single quarter which too is record deficit in 40 years. Ahsan pointed out that the last time the deficit was this large was when mass development project were underway which made some sense but this government had not laid a single brick of development and yet it has damaged the economy with a sharp 3.9 percent fiscal deficit hike over three months.
The third most crucial indicator, the inflation, he said has shot through the roof from three percent to over thirteen percent which is catastrophic when coupled with low growth and fiscal deficit. Ahsan also pointed out that the state bank had busted PTI’s claims of cutting down import by mentioning that the decrease was because the heavy machinery imported for CPEC projects had been completed, not because of routine import reform. He demanded that PTI regime should share a practicable plan in the parliament or else should step down to save the country.
Muhammad Zubair said he did not believe that the government had any economic plan at all therefore there was no point giving them any more time. He said that even after registering record fiscal deficit in a quarter the Prime Minister and his cabinet members were celebrating which proves that they had no idea of how the economy works.
Zubair said that the people who were sold to the public as the ultimate economic planners are no longer a part of the PTI regime’s team. These rented IMF stooges will wreak havoc on Pakistan’s economy, pack their bags and head back to their previous jobs dooming the 220 million people of Pakistan. He said there is no direction, no policy, no plan and on top of that the government continues to give hundreds of billions in tax bailouts to its blue-eyed. Zubair reminded Khan of his complaining over Rs 60,000 billion foreign debt and yet Khan has borrowed Rs 76,000 billion in just one year, more than the entire history of the country combined, he said.
PML-N Secretary Information Marriyum Aurangzeb said the incompetence, ineptness and cluelessness of the “selected prime minister” and his imposed regime had brought the country to hell’s gates. She said that despite record borrowing, record development cuts, record inflation, record tax hikes, record rupee devaluation the regime could not achieve its own set targets which should be enough for a shameful administration to resign if they love this country and not just their lust for power.
The former information minister said that month after month and one fiscal quarter after another, the PTI regime and its selected prime minister are digging Pakistan’s economy into a deeper hole.
“The poor people of this country are buried under 200 percent gas price hike, 35 percent electricity hike, rendering 1.5 million jobless and pushing 4,5 million below the poverty line and yet the rich got Rs 300 billion in tax and fines write-offs.
The economy is nose-diving to a fatal crash, the people cannot afford a meal a day anymore and the PTI regime instead of tackling these ginormous challenges is once again busy slinging mud at Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif and their family. How prejudicial and removed from reality of the situation is this imposed regime is beyond human comprehension”, Marriyum said. She said from the farce of austerity to the deception of accountability the double standards of Khan’s regime are staggering.
