ISLAMABAD: Main opposition parties Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Friday rejected what they called “faulty” economic policies of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf -led government and decided to expose them at every forum.

The decision was taken after a meeting of PML-N’s recently formed Economic Advisory Council (EAC) that reviewed economic policies of the government.

The EAC comprises Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, Ahsan Iqbal, Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh, Muhammad Zubair, Miftah Ismail, Ayesha Ghaus Pasha, Musha­hid Hussain Syed, Musaddik Malik, Ali Pervez Malik, Bilal Azhar Kiyani, Attaullah Tarar, Shaza Khuwaja, Marriyum Aurang­zeb. Ishaq Dar, Mifta Ismail and Marriyum Aurangzeb joined the meeting online.

Following the meeting, Mr Zubair held a press conference and vowed to expose what he called faulty policies of the government at all forums.

Giving details of the meeting, he said it had been decided that the PML-N would start an awareness campaign against inflation in and outside the parliament. In this connection seminars would be organised in which traders would be invited. Similarly, government policies will be exposed through talk shows, news conferences and the media.

The meeting decided that to register the party’s protest in the parliament house, a demonstration will be staged outside the gate No-1 in the parliament house from Monday.

“Now the economic situation has become so worse that everything will collapse if this government continues to run for the next six months,” he added.

He claimed that Prime Minister Imran Khan, PTI leader Jehangir Tareen and Minister for Food Security Khusro Bakhtiar were involved in present sugar and wheat crisis in the country.

“They were involved in Rs40 billion wheat and Rs8 billion sugar scams,” he claimed.

Another PML-N leader, Aysha Ghous Baksh, said the present government had obtained additional foreign debts of Rs1,200 billion.

PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif in a statement called PTI leadership the “corrupt mafia” and said first it exported sugar and now it was importing it. “First they deprived the people of sugar by exporting it and now they are causing losses to national exchequer by importing the commodity at high price,” he added.

Mr Sharif said the government should tell the nation how much sugar was exported by some influential personalities in the government. He said this year the yield of sugarcane was 10 per cent less than the target set but even then the government allowed export of sugar. He demanded that a parliamentary committee should be formed to ascertain facts.

Meanwhile, Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, spokesman for the PPP chairman, has said there is no way left other than that of sending the prime minister home because the country’s economy is sinking in a tsunami of change. “Last year, one million people were unemployed in the government that was supposed to bring change. It is feared that another 12 million people will be unemployed this year,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2020