KARACHI, Aug 27: A leading economist has questioned the wisdom of the government’s privatisation policy and claimed that economic growth based on consumer financing, bank profits made by depriving depositors of their rightful returns, almost no returns on government saving schemes and scam-oriented stock market booms, was a bubble that had now been stretched to the limits and which would burst on the slightest prick.

These views were expressed by Dr Shahid Hassan Siddiqui while speaking at a programme on the “Economic Development, Reality or Myth”, organised by the Pakistan Peoples Party at the Peoples Secretariat as part of its weekly lecture series. Former federal minister Akbar Lasi presided over the programme.

Dr Shahid Hassan Siddqui said that handing over of profit making national units to foreigners at throw away prices or speculative and manipulated buying of shares of existing units by foreign speculators could never be termed foreign investment. It was instead a recipe for national disaster because not only the control of vital units and infrastructure had been handed over to the ‘New East India Companies’ but huge amounts of profits were also being remitted abroad, he claimed.

He pointed out that the stock exchange was regularly siphoning off billions worth of the savings of local small investors through manipulated periodic crashes.

Dr Shahid Hassan said that within two years the balance of payment deficit in foreign trade had risen from 1.5 billion dollars to over 12 billion dollars which was a highly alarming situation. This fact alone was enough to demonstrate the failure of the government’s ‘investment through privatisation’ programme which had not only resulted in large scale unemployment but also in the closure of more than 70 per cent of the privatised industries.

He pointed out that the trade deficit had slightly increased only due to the increase in international prices of oil. The fact remained that Pakistan was today importing almost every other thing, including those agricultural items in which it had always remained self sufficient and an exporting country. He questioned as to what the increase in GDP signified if the country was depending less on its own production and more on imports.

He regretted that the great advantage of total over 21 billions of foreign remittances and Western support received after 9/11 had been wasted in needless imports and wasteful government expenditure. Giving example of the “senseless and harmful” economic thinking of the government, Dr Hassan pointed out that while everyone from top to bottom in the government boasted that more than 30 million mobile phones were being used in Pakistan, the government had not even considered the option of asking any mobile phone company to put up a manufacturing plant in Pakistan. In spite of its huge population and huge market, the country had not manufactured or assembled a single mobile phone, he pointed out.

Quoting from published data of the State Bank of Pakistan and other government institutions, Dr Hassan said that even this forged and fabricated economic data painted a picture of much lower economic indicators than were achieved in the so-called “failed decade” of the 90s.

Akbar Lasi, in his presidential remarks, drew a very depressing picture of the economic backwardness and the poverty prevailing in Balochistan. Having great mineral and natural wealth, the largest area-wise province of Pakistan, which had by far the smallest population, was also the province where poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, disease and other social handicaps were the highest, he said.