June 09, 2006	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 12, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 8: Leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) on Thursday termed the budget a “political stunt” and challenged the government’s budgetary figures alleging that the rulers were hiding the actual expenditures from the nation.

Speaking at a news conference, PML-N Senator Ishaq Dar, MNA Khwaja Asif and information secretary Ahsan Iqbal lashed out at the government’s economic policies and termed the budget as “pro- elite, pro-multinationals and pro-banks”.

Senator Ishaq Dar said the government was wrongly claiming that the overall fiscal deficit this year was 4.2 per cent of the GDP. He claimed that the fiscal deficit was well over five per cent. He said the government was claiming Rs372 billion fiscal deficit, while it was actually about Rs548 billion.

He criticised the government for not presenting details of supplementary grants before the parliament as it had spent at least Rs131 billion more than the allocation. He said there would be no use of presenting the details in this regard on June 15 as at that time no discussion could be held on the budget in the Senate. He said last year, too, the government did not present the book of the supplementary grants with the budget. “It is a bad tradition and it has never happened in the history of Pakistan,” he added.

Mr Dar said the budget was only a political stunt and it would have a bad impact on the economy. He said the team of “foreign managers,” which had prepared the budget, was actually working for the foreign banks. He claimed that there had been an increase of 1,290,000 unemployed people in the country during the last seven years of the military regime. He said the government claimed to have returned $5 billion loans and, at the same time, it had acquired over $6 billion new loans. He said the government had put an extra burden of Rs814 billion loans on the nation.

The PML-N senator also criticised the minister of state for finance for using “derogatory language” in the budget speech. It seemed that the minister had delivered a political speech, instead of the budget speech, he said.

Mr Dar said the government had not announced any step to check the price-hike, and was claiming pulses and sugar were being sold at cheaper rates at utility stores.

He said the facility of utility stores was available to only five to 10 per cent of the population. He said the government should have announced uniform increase of at least 25 per cent in the pension of all the retired employees.

Replying to a question, former chairman of the Privatisation Commission Khwaja Mohammad Asif admitted that the PML-N government also wanted to privatise Pakistan Steel Mills. He said they supported the concept of the privatisation, but at the same time, they believed that the national assets should not be sold for paltry amounts. Moreover, he said, during their government, they never used the privatisation proceeds to meet the fiscal deficit. He said they were ready to challenge the government’s figures at any forum, including courts.