KARACHI: PMLN says the PTI government has fudged figures including the population Pakistan to lie about its economic performance to the nation.
At a press conference in Karachi, Central Leader and former Federal Finance Minister Miftah Ismail and former Governor Sindh Muhammad Zubair said that worldwide the top 3 indicators of any economy are its GDP growth, inflation rate, and budget deficit. PTI had failed disastrously at all three of these indicators, they said. They said Imran Khan has added a debt equal to 50 percent of all debt since Pakistan was formed. They said that Nawaz Sharif, in his 3 tenures as PM did not add this much debt that Imran had added in just 3 years.
Miftah Ismail said that the PTI government while calculating the GDP growth took Pakistan’s population as 210.10 million whereas the actual population was 220.80 million according to 2017 census and 2.4 percent population increase. Miftah said by doing this, the PTI excluded over 10.5 million people of Pakistan from its calculation which was a drastic case of figure-fudging.
Miftah said since February 25th, the prices of 51most basic items had been increasing by 13 percent every single week and 17 percent in the last week. The Sensitive price index increase, he said had pushed millions below the poverty line. He told how the PMLN government, by controlling inflation, had lifted over 20 million people out of poverty but the PTI government’s inflation, hyper-taxation and high unemployment. He pointed out how the Consumer Price Index had also taken major hit because of the government’s disastrous economic policies and mismanagement. There is 14 percent food inflation in rural areas and 15 percent in urban areas.
Miftah said, “The PTI government has inflicted historic budget deficit of over RS 10 thousand billion the past 3 years. The deficit was 9.1 percent, it was 8.1 percent in the second year even after taking out Ehsas Program and Benazir Income Support Program. PMLN government’s total budget deficit in 5 years was around Rs 8 thousand billion and if the devaluation is added, PTI’s Rs 10,000 billion budget deficit would be even more. PMLN’s average deficit was 5.7 while PTI’s is 8.7”.
Miftah said that the PTI government boasts of reducing the current account deficit but the truth is that reduction resulted in an economic crisis that had led to major poverty and deterioration of the industrial sector. He explained that the PTO government devalued the rupee by over 40 percent and then for the first two years put a ban on virtually all imports, slashed education budget, public health budget, and development budget which obviously tilted the current account. This ban on imports hit the industrialization hard which staggered the country’s industrial production. All this he said is like cutting down the expenses of a household by starving the family members, taking children out from schools and refusing to give medicine for the ill.
“But despite all these disastrous policies, the PTI government failed to even match the export numbers of PMLN government which were $24.8 billion dollar. The PTI failed to even touch this amount so far”, he said.
Miftah said the PTI is very fond of blaming covid-19 for bad economic situation but doesn’t give credit for remittances increase to covid-19. He said the increase in foreign remittances was because of travel bans due to covid-19 and that money was being sent to Pakistan, and the PTO government did nothing to make this happen.
Muhammad Zubair said the figure fudging by PTI was so blatant that Imran Khan himself was shocked when the economic numbers were shared with him. He reminded how PTI backtracked its initial claim of 3.3 percent growth to 1.9 percent after first fiscal year. Therefore, he said, PMLN didn’t accept this new figure of 3.9 percent GDP growth because just a month ago all government departments were predicting between 2 to 3 percent growth and yet they fail to explain what miracle happened over 1 month that it was jackedup to 3.9.
Zubair told that PMLN had over 4 percent growth in its firt year which was the most difficult. He told that according to government’s own numbers, inflation is ona high, Foreign Investment had reduced by 33 percent, domestic development spending had been slashed then what was the engine of growth for this 3.9 percent.
The former governor Sindh said, “if the economy was doing so good, why did Shaukat Tareen say that PTI had destroyed national economy just a month ago. If the economy was doing so good, why is inflation, poverty and unemployment on a high. If the economy os doing so good, why is the national economy’s volume contracting”.
Zubair Challenged PTI to prove that the PMLN fudged figures regarding the growth rate, poverty, employment in its tenure on the floor of the house. He slammed the allegation of artificial economic indicators and said if the PMLN government lifted millions out of poverty while increasing exports and the GDP growth rate of the country all while creating millions of jobs and development projects.
