Islamabad:
Pakistan has gone through many “red lines” for the international monetary fund program and compromised its “dignity” to fill the external funding lake on Tuesday, said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif Sharif Tuesday while telling his struggle for the first year to withdraw the country on the edge of failure.
The Prime Minister, who celebrated a year in the power of his government in an unusual manner by organizing an open cabinet meeting, told the history of the last year to obtain foreign loans and respond to the requests of the IMF in order to avoid sovereign defect.
We have crossed many red lines in the IMF and everyone worked very hard to fulfill the conditions of the IMF, said the Prime Minister in his speech at the special meeting of the federal cabinet, which was also assisted by people from different horizons and journalists.
The Prime Minister spoke of the conditions of the IMF at a time when the fund team is already in town to examine the country’s performance before approving the second loan tranche of $ 1 billion.
It was the second meeting of the cabinet in the past 11 years that was opened for the media. Earlier in January 2014, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held a meeting of the cabinet in the presence of the media in which the Minister of Finance at the time, Ishaq Dar, had made a presentation on the state of the economy.
For prolonged funds (EFF), the IMF has required organizing $ 5 billion to fill the external financing lake and money does not develop on trees or could be operated, so, and the personnel chief of the army have been in friendly countries, said the Prime Minister.
He told another conversation between the sovereign of the United Arab Emirates and him on the reversal of the debt of $ 2 billion. The debt matured in January that the United Arab Emirates extended for one more year.
During his last visit, the Sovereign of the Water said that the debt of $ 2 billion was late and what was the plan, said the Prime Minister. Then after our conversion, the water sovereign said that the debt had been fired, said Sharif.
“When we are going to ask for money, we compromise our dignity,” said Shehbaz Sharif.
In 2018, the Minister of Commerce at the time, Abdul Razak Dawood, said a similar situation when former Prime Minister Imran Khan went to Saudi Arabia to seek more loans. He had obtained the package of $ 6 billion. Dawood had described the trip as “horrible”.
In the past year, 20 licenses on land and 40 offshore licenses for oil and gas exploration have been issued and these explorations would help repay the foreign debt of $ 130 billion, said Dar-Prime Minister Ishaq Dar.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Kuwait have planned to invest 27 billion dollars and the government is working to offer bancable projects, said Ishaq.
The Minister of Planning, Ahsan Iqbal, revealed that Pakistan had made internal failure in April 2022 when the Ministry of Finance had refused to disclose the development budget of the April-June quarter of this exercise. This had happened for the first time that no development budget was published during a quarter, he added.
In his speech, the Prime Minister said that in the past year, there was a question of satisfaction that no case of corruption had surfaced or a unique false allegation in this regard was levelded by the opposition.
However, his government is now facing an investigation against 37 allegedly corrupt customs officials who were appointed by a leading intelligence agency as part of a smuggling network of 78 people.
The Prime Minister said that they should work hard to relieve the unfortunate and financially lower segments of the company with all kinds of aid and compassion, especially in the sacred month of Ramazan.
Sharif criticized the bureaucracy and said that many of them do not work and fine lame excuses.
The Prime Minister said the government would distribute a Ramzan package of 20 billion rupees for the benefit of four million deserving families thanks to a digital portfolio system. Each family would obtain 5,000 rupees each, so the new system would close the doors of all kinds of allegations of financial mismanagement which had seriously tainted the operation of entities like Utility Stores Corporation, said Shehbaz Sharif.
The Prime Minister said that with hard work, the government had succeeded in carrying out the economic reversal and leading the country of the financial strait. The Prime Minister said that all macroeconomic indicators were on a large scale and asked members to work hard with dedication and commitment, as these were prerequisites for making Pakistan an economy of a dollars Billion by 2035.
Sharif underlined the need to connect losses of 850 billion rupees suffered by companies belonging to losses belonging to states, which called them “ bottomless well ”, which had to be connected, in addition to the need to end the circular debt in the electricity sector. He expressed optimism that with collective efforts, Pakistan would emerge stronger and stressed on the development of a culture of forgiveness, affection and tolerance in society.
The Deputy Prime Minister said that the diplomatic isolation of Pakistan was over and that the country has become a non-permanent member of the CSNU for the year 2025-2010, adding after a 27-year gap, multilateral international conferences like the OCS and the education of girls took place in Pakistan.
Economic stabilization
The Minister of Finance, Muhammad Aurangzeb, gave an overview of the economy and said that the Pakistan Stock Exchange had increased 71% in return, while the surplus of the current account was the highest in the last 20 years. He informed that the rights plans of 43 ministries and their 400 attached departments were underway, while the pension reforms and the agricultural tax were introduced for the first time.
The Minister said that FBR revenues increased by 26%. The other major stages were the introduction of a facialless evaluation system which experienced 16% income as soon as possible, he added.
Aurangzeb said that all international monetary institutions had praised the economic achievements of the outgoing government in Pakistan.
The Ministry of Finance addressed the question of the growth of retirement liabilities and the direct contributory retirement plan was informed in July of last year. The pension fund has also been created and several pensions are over, he added.
Aurangzeb said that for the first time, the federal government bought a debt Billion to facilitate reimbursement pressures. He said the first Vert Sukuk will soon be published on PSX and Panda obligations will be launched before the end of this calendar year on the Chinese market to diversify funding sources and reduce costs.
The Ministry of Finance has signed the national tax pact, set up a tax office and reactivated the National Tax Council, said Aurangzeb.
Power situation
The Minister of Power Awais Ahmed Laghari informed the cabinet about the reforms of the power sector, saying that these efforts had led to a reduction of RS151 billion industrial cross subsidies. Until February of this year, the price of electricity per unit had been reduced by RS4.96, benefiting consumers and industry, claimed the Minister of Power.
Laghari also said that the contracts of 14 independent electricity producers had been examined and that five ineffective IPP agreements were terminated and that eight bagisse factories had been concluded. These steps led to life savings of 1.33 billion of rupees, he added.
Federal Minister of Information Technologies, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, also presented a report on the performance of his ministry saying that 15 million new broadband subscribers had been added while the telecommunications sector contributed to 341 billion rupees to the national economy.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister of Defense, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said that the last year of the government was like a trip to get up. He said that an opposition party that appreciated power in the past had policies that have not synchronized with national interests. The same party was about to create chaos in the country and invite strangers to interfere in internal matters of the country, he added.
