(January 16-2023)
Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said some politicians are destroying the country for the sake of power.
He said that people facing record inflation are fed up with political tussles between different political parties.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that increasing the price of gas will have a negative impact on the country’s economy and production will be affected, while bread will become more expensive.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that will increase with the new gas tariff as they are already facing 25% general and 35% food inflation.
He said that failed politicians want to get power at any cost for which they are staking the future of the country and there is no one to stop them.
At present, people are running after flour, there is no milk for infants, people are deprived of electricity and gas in winter, there is no medicine in hospitals and there is a scarcity of many items including food items, medical equipment, spare parts and industrial machinery etc.
The containers having essential items are stuck at the port the government does not have the dollars to redeem them, he said, adding that the country’s population is rapidly falling below the poverty line, Pakistan ranks 99 out of 121 countries in the global hunger index, while terrorism has again become a serious problem.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that due to the efforts of the current government, the confidence of international institutions and friendly countries has started to recover due to which the Geneva Conference and friendly countries have expressed their willingness to give more loans, but the problems with the IMF are still unresolved.
Pakistan has to pay twenty-one billion dollars this year and a total of seventy billion dollars in the next three years, the rollover of which is impossible without going into IMF discipline, he observed.
Due to the coronavirus and the subsequent war between Russia and Ukraine, the world economy is shrinking continuously and many countries are not able to help Pakistan enough, even if they want to, because these countries are more focused on providing relief to their own people.
The business leader said that Pakistan’s economy was much better than India’s till 1980, but due to the losses of state-run companies, lack of focus on agriculture and industry, the lowest tax to GDP in the region and circular debt, etc., the treasury has become empty.
While India has almost six hundred billion dollars in foreign exchange. The government needs political stability to change harmful policies and ensure development.
If the economy is not prioritized over politics, then the dream of a prosperous country will not be fulfilled, he warned.
