ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Wednesday blamed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government for bringing the country to the verge of a ‘financial disaster’, saying the country’s economy characterised by fake and fudged numbers, artificial exchange rate and artificially built reserves stood exposed with former minister Ishaq Dar still in hiding.

This was stated by PPP information secretary Nafisa Shah while speaking at a news conference. She said the PML-N announced its typical amnesty scheme to lure the business community as part of its election campaign just as it had done in the past to turn their black money white. “Once again a similar amnesty scheme [under which people will be allowed to bring foreign exchange by paying nominal taxes] is being launched through which some personalities of ruling elite will be benefited,” she said.

“In our view the charges by the National Accountability Bureau are much smaller as compared with this charge sheet that holds the PML-N government responsible for bringing this country to the verge of a financial disaster,” she added.

Ms Shah said that instead of boosting production and industry, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was being used for very expensive power projects, which only added to the debt burden on the country.

“The PML-N lions roared that they would make Pakistan an Asian Tiger. Instead they have made Pakistan a client state dependent on largesse from friendly countries,” she said, adding that the government that went with a begging bowl to Saudi Arabia for 1.5 billion dollars was again going to China for two billion dollars injection.

Ms Shah said that for four years the government had artificially kept the rupee strong against the dollar by injecting dollars into the economy, but in the past 100 days the authorities allowed the rupee to fall against the dollar. “This 10 per cent depreciation has added to debt,” she claimed, adding that the total debt and liabilities, which were Rs16.338 trillion in June 2013, increased to Rs26.814trn by December 2017. Similarly, she said, total external debt was $60.899 billion in June 2013, but it surged to $88.891bn in December 2017.

Ms Shah said the government’s privatisation policy had also been a disaster. Instead of restructuring public sector entities, it just allowed them to accumulate debt, she said, adding that the Privatisation Commission secretary too had flatly refused to endorse the hurriedly designed buy-one-get-one-free plan of the government.

The PPP leader said that public sector entities’ debt in June 2013 was Rs425.27bn, which reached Rs1.21trn by the end of December 2017. Circular debt doubled from Rs500bn in 2013 to nearly Rs1trn in 2018, she said. Also the current account deficit, which was $4.6bn in 2013, rose to nearly $12.4bn last year, she said. Current trends indicated that it could reach $15bn by the end of the current financial year, she added.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2018