(June-07-2023)
Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain said on Wednesday that the IMF’s reputation is affected by the reluctance to give credit to Pakistan.
“The IMF is repeatedly changing the conditions and keeping the programme suspended,” he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that the international organisation should play its economic role in this region and avoid taking a political role.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that making a budget will be difficult in the absence of support from the international institution.
He noted that seven trillion rupees are required for debt servicing and defence expenses, after which the government will have nothing left to run the country’s system.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that in the next financial year, Pakistan has to pay 25 billion dollars, which will have to be rolled over.
Even if Saudi Arabia, China, and the United Arab Emirates give two to four billion dollars to Pakistan, it will not be enough to save Pakistan from bankruptcy, he observed.
The business leader noted that cosmetic measures to avoid bankruptcy will only hurt the economy instead of improving it.
Four decades ago, Pakistan’s economy was much better than India’s, but currently India’s foreign exchange reserves are 650 billion dollars, exports are 660 billion dollars, and remittances are 100 billion dollars, while Pakistan’s remittances and exports are both falling, inflation has reached 38 percent, foreign exchange reserves are 4.5 billion dollars, and the value of our currency is continuously decreasing, he informed.
It shows that India’s priorities have remained much better than Pakistan’s, he said, adding that some reasons behind Pakistan’s economic collapse include imports more than twice as much as exports during the previous government, political chaos, lack of governance, increasing corruption, incompetence, irresponsibility of the ruling elite, VIP culture, waste of resources, tax evasion, a policy of prioritising politics over economy, a lack of rule of law, mockery in the name of accountability, mafia rule, etc.
Mian Zahid Hussain furthered that the economic foundations of the country are mined, and no international organisation or friendly country can diffuse them to put our economy on the path of development; we will have to do it ourselves and fill all the holes.
If the government makes a strategy to lead the national economy on the path of self-sufficiency, the business community will fully cooperate with it,” he said.
