KARACHI, May 01 (INP): Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain has said that disbursement of $1.1 billion tranche by International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) is commendable.
In a statement issued here on Wednesday, he said that the decision of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to keep interest rates unchanged has disappointed the business community.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that we were responsible for the devastation of the country’s economy and will have to fix it as no one else was going to do it for us.
The IMF decision was a reason for satisfaction as this shows that the confidence of lender was increasing in Pakistan, which will also increase the confidence of friendly countries and other creditors, he added.
The business leader said that the IMF’s move would also pave the way for a new three-year loan from the IMF as the lender was satisfied with the government’s policy and financial measures.
He said that the economic condition of Pakistan was improving, inflation is also decreasing, and in these circumstances, it would have been better if the interest rate had been reduced.
However, the Central Bank was afraid that inflation could bounce back therefore the interest rate was maintained, which has disappointed the business community, he added.
Mian Zahid Hussain demanded that the SBP should reduce policy rates in the following review.
He said that we have set fire to the country’s economy, and we have to put it out. International organizations and friendly countries cannot do anything in this regard, he observed.
The said that to improve the economy, painful reforms and improvements in the tax system need to be done in order to get out of the chronic payments crisis.
Due to the ignoring merit, the influential were getting richer; the people were getting poorer while the country’s economy was getting weaker, he observed.
He warned that now was the time to rectify the situation; otherwise, it will be impossible to run the country. Mian Zahid Hussain said that right now, our growth rate was less than two per cent, which was impossible to increase under the supervision of the IMF.
He said that economic prosperity was only possible with debt relief. Next year, we have to pay 24 billion dollars in debt and interest, which was three times more than the current reserves of the central bank, while we have to pay more than 8000 billion rupees in interest on domestic debt, which was 90% of our total revenue.
Mian Zahid Hussain further said that the failed institutions that are facing difficulties in privatization should be closed immediately because trillions of rupees are being wasted year after year running them. Still, it has become difficult to run them now.
