ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders on Monday said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has destroyed the country’s economy.
PML-N Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal said that the financial statistics of Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Hafeez Shaikh are as accurate as his knowledge about the price of tomatoes.
Responding to the finance adviser’s statements, Ahsan said that the economy cannot be fixed by accusations and allegations. “The rant about Pakistan being at the verge of economic collapse has actually destroyed the country’s economy,” he added.
He said that the finance adviser was lying through his teeth when he said that the economy was in tatters when the incumbent government assumed charge. “International financial institutions, including the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have confirmed that Pakistan’s economy was growing at almost 6 per cent and was among the emerging economies of the world,” he added.
The former planning minister said that PML-N supreme leader and former premier Nawaz Sharif handed over a Pakistan growing at 5.8 per cent and with the lowest inflation rate of 3 per cent to the “incompetent and clueless” PTI government. “This inept regime has shot up inflation to 14 per cent in one year and buried growth to 2.5 per cent,” he added.
This government, he said, has achieved the impossible task of making the fastest growing economy of Asia turn into the slowest moving economy in just 15 months. He also said that the current account deficit is another proof of the incompetence of this government which was inevitable after its policies led to businesses being shut down and trade being slowed.
He said that during the PML-N government, there was a record tax collection with a shortfall of just Rs162 billion but today all growth engines are in the negative. “It is the first time in the country’s history that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is on its way to bankruptcy,” he added.
Ahsan said that another proof of the government’s incompetence is that even the country’s defence budget has been jeopardised. “Basic public welfare sectors like education and health have also been financially crippled,” he added.
Responding to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech, PML-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb said that pollution is not the only silent killer because a “selected, incompetent and lying prime minister is even more lethal”.
The former information minister said that the prime minister has put up his name plaque over Nawaz’s Green Pakistan project after two years. She said that Imran’s ‘Naya Pakistan’ might not have a billion trees but it sure is close to a billion government lies.
She pointed out that Imran should have at least done his homework before his speech because the parliament had approved the Pakistan Climate Change Act.
Marriyum said that Nawaz started the Rs5 billion Green Pakistan project in February 2017. “Under this programme, millions of trees were to be planted across Pakistan, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit-Baltistan (SB) and erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),” she added.
She said that in Nawaz’s Green Pakistan project, the entire country’s institutions were to be engaged, including educational institutions. “This also included designating February 9 as the National Green Day. The original legislation included deadlines and targets which Imran shredded and trashed for 14 months,” she added.
Marriyum said that the PTI government has zero work to claim over the formulation of this programme but surely deserves 100 per cent credit for zero progress in the past 15 months.
She further said that instead of wasting nation’s time, money and resources on such events, PM Imran should read this 2017 legislation and work on implementing it. “The entire country is still waiting for a single visionary policy of his own other than his incessant lying,” she concluded.
