ISLAMABAD:
A day after the government presented its “responsible, balanced budget,” the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) rejected Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh’s claims of economic stability.
Speaking at a press conference to present his party’s reaction to the federal budget, PML-N leader and former finance minister Senator Ishaq Dar censured the government and its economic team for tall claims and unrealistic budgetary figures, and proposed remedial measures.
Flanked by parliamentarians from his party, Dar said it was unfortunate that the total debt of the country was Rs6 trillion when Pervez Musharraf left and now the figure has almost doubled to Rs12 trillion.
The country was paying Rs459.09 billion in interest on domestic debt in 2008-09 when the incumbent government presented its first budget, and that has now soared to Rs845.60 billion when it presenting its fifth budget, Dar said.
Senator Dar said that supplementary grants have soared to 20% against 18.2% of current expenditures in previous budget. “The heavy amount of supplementary grants reflects financial mismanagement on the part of government,” he said, opposing supplementary grants worth Rs425 billion, and saying that this practice should come to an end.
Dar said the government had estimated current expenditures of Rs2,315 billion in 2011-12, but by the end of the year it had reached Rs2,632 billion. He said that all these policies have resulted in what he claimed runaway inflation with prices of essentials like milk and pulses increasing by 300% to 500%.
According to Dar, around 74% of the population is earning around $2 per day, and are on the threshold of falling into extreme poverty.
Dar also said the budget lacks remedial measures to cope with the chronic energy crisis. As a short-term solution, he suggested recovering Rs300 billion worth of loans, which were written off on political grounds, to pay off the circular debt to get rid of power outages.
The proposed allocation of Rs183 billion for power sector would not be enough to overcome the power crisis, he said, adding that the existing power units could also be upgraded to generate an additional 1,200 megawatts of electricity.
He also said the proposal for creating 100,000 more jobs was unrealistic, and that “the government should come up with sensible measures to overcome unemployment.”
Dar said the next government will inherit incomplete projects amounting to Rs1.8 trillion.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 3rd, 2012.
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