(March 25, 2022)
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 Friday said war between Russia and Ukraine poses a major threat to the West-controlled global economic order.
Russia and its allies are developing new rules for international trade while the threat of widespread hunger looms over the world due to the conflict, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that the world is being divided into two blocks, the free market economy and the controlled economy, which will create new challenges.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that steps that were taken by former US President Trump, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and the outbreak of Coronavirus had shaken the foundations of globalization and now key countries are nailing the last nail in its coffin.
The monopoly of the dollar which it has enjoyed for 78 years is under threat, he said, adding that Western countries had targeted Iran, Cuba, North Korea and other small countries whose economic losses were tolerable but now a big country has been targeted which may backfire.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that Russia supplies the West with 24% oil and 80% gas and the sanctions will be producing unpredictable results.
Central Asian countries, like the rest of the world, are being hit hard by Western sanctions, their currencies are depreciating, economic pressures are mounting and remittances from Russia are declining, he observed.
The West should know that if the losses of the countries affected by the sanctions are not remedied, they will ignore the sanctions and put their own interests first.
International institutions like the IMF and World Bank should extend support to the poor countries caught unaware in the conflict and facing serious economic consequences.
The business leader further said that NATO countries have failed to secure Europe which has damaged their credibility while the visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister to Afghanistan is of utmost importance in the rapidly changing global situation.
He said the business community welcomed the offer of China to include Afghanistan in the CPEC.
