LAHORE, Dec 15: Federal Minister Mahmud Ali has said that Pakistan, which is already under heavy foreign debt, should now stop raising further loans from the World Bank and the IMF if it wants to preserve its independence.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Lahore branch of the Tehrik-i-Takmeel-i-Pakistan at a hotel here on Sunday.

Mahmud Ali, who is also Tehrik president, said that Pakistan had already repaid more than the principal amount as debt servicing and there was no reason why it should continue to pay to the international agencies.

He said that about a decade ago Pakistan’s total debt was about $ 31 billion and it had paid $32 billion in the form of debt servicing.

He said that he had asked the then prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif launch a campaign to clear the debt, stop raising further loans and instead ask the World Bank and the IMF to reimburse to Pakistan $ 1 billion which it had repaid to them in excess of the loans it had received by then.

He said that Nawaz Sharif had launched the campaign but did not stop raising loans. “Now Pakistan is under a debt of $ 38 billion and half of its budget is spent on debt servicing alone.”

Mahmud Ali said that the malady of seeking foreign loans had started from the days of Ayub Khan who, while promulgating the country’s first nation-wide martial law, had boasted that he would make Pakistan so much financially strong and prosperous that streams of milk and honey would flow in the country.

Instead of milk and honey he depended upon foreign loans which had accumulated to the tune of $ 38 billion during the past four decades. The people of Pakistan were hard working and they could do without foreign loans.

“Let the 140 million people of Pakistan rise and make a determined effort not to rely on foreign assistance and I see no reason why they cannot succeed,” he emphasised.

Explaining the aims and objects of his organization, he said that to begin with the Tehrik wanted to have some arrangement for close cooperation between the people of Pakistan and Bangladesh under his theory of ‘one-nation, two states.’

He said that the people of former East Pakistan had been forcibly separated from Pakistan and he still believed sincerely that a majority of them never wanted separation. Had there been a referendum they would certainly voted again separation.

He said that the Tehrik had great designs of uniting 480 million Muslims of Pakistan (140 million) Bangladesh (140 million) and India (200 million). He said that people asked him how was it possible and his reply was that when the Quaid-i-Azam had launched struggle for a separate homeland the people doubted that Pakistan would ever be carved out of India. But with constant struggle Pakistan became a reality.

He said that the Lahore Resolution had demanded whole of the Punjab and Bengal and some parts of Assam to be part of Pakistan but Hindu-British conspiracy succeeded in scuttling the original scheme.

Tehrik’s Punjab president Adeeb Javidani in his brief speech criticized the federal government for allocating Rs5 million to each MNA for development works in his or her constituency.

He said that similar allocations had been made by the previous governments to woo the legislators to support them and now the present government had allocated Rs2 billion to wing the favours of the assembly members instead of spending the huge amount for poverty alleviation.

He supported the suggestion of Mahmud Ali for stopping raising further loans.