(Written By, Abu Raaja Haider)
Shaukat Tareen, the fourth Finance Minister to take the lead in reviving and stabilizing the country's economy in the last three years, has made it clear that the wheel of the economy is not turning, contrary to the government's general statement.
There is no investment, inflation is rising. It was also a mistake to set interest rates at 13.25% and sales tax at 17%. If we do not take GDP growth to 5%, productivity will not increase and employment opportunities will not increase. To achieve these goals, we have to make tough decisions. In this regard, he termed the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for economic loans and its terms as strict, calling for abuses from Pakistan and especially the demand for an increase in electricity tariffs. Indicated a review of the organization's program.
In a briefing session of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Finance on Monday, he described the real situation of the national economy in a concise manner, which shows where we have faced shortcomings on the economic front in the last three years and how to address them. What should we do now? He also promised that we are now in the process of stabilizing the economy. "We have a lack of proper planning. To improve this, we have implemented ten measures, including price stabilization, agriculture, industry, revenue, housing, social security, national services, debt management, and privatization of loss-making government agencies," he said. Twelve sectors have been selected and economists have begun work on them.
The Finance Minister spoke of achieving the revenue target by increasing the tax net instead of raising electricity tariffs instead of raising electricity tariffs to reduce revolving debts and said that the privatization of state-owned enterprises could not be run by the government. Will be He also said that exports were not increasing as most of the businesses were local rather than foreign investors. He later told the media that inflation was on the rise but steps were being taken to curb it. Sales tax is too high at 17% and measures are being taken to reduce it.
The Finance Minister's address also revealed that 85% of the revenue of all the provinces is spent on only 9 cities while very little is spent on health and education. China will be asked to provide jobs to 10 million Pakistanis to end unemployment in the country. In the meeting, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Waqar Masood said that if the third wave of Corona had not come, the growth rate would have been 4%. Shaukat Tareen has been brought in after the experience of three finance ministers. He has been the country's finance minister before and before taking charge in the current government, many of his valuable suggestions on stabilizing the country's economy have been coming out through the media, so it should be expected that he will be the second economic.
In addition to rectifying the shortcomings, the international financial institutions, especially the IMF, will be able to rectify the situation. Against the backdrop of the devastating Corona epidemic, it is time to relax the terms of loans from the IMF. The general impression is that the IMF's interference in the economic affairs of the country has increased a lot and the problems facing the nation at present, including inflation, are in one form or another the hand of this international institution. If Shaukat Tareen can remove this impression, it will be a great achievement of the present government.
