Political seminar: PTI election manifesto faces tough scrutiny

Party leaders hope internal taxation will end reliance on foreign aid.


Myra Iqbal April 04, 2013
A photo showing PTI chairman Imran Khan. PHOTO: PPI / FILE

ISLAMABAD:


As part of a series of seminars to dissect the manifestos of various political parties, the Sustainable Policy Development Institute invited speakers from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) in Islamabad on Wednesday to address a gathering of journalists and political enthusiasts.


The PTI’s 31-page account of projected changes to turn around rampant corruption and deprivation in Pakistan is to its credit, cloaked with an optimism that is heartening were it to satiate the many echoes of ‘but how?’ within the seminar room.

The verbal crossfire between PTI’s advocates and those curious to undress a prudish set of plans was not out of hostility, but out of genuine curiosity.

PTI’s Deputy Secretary Information Ahmad Jawad and the party’s International Chapter chief Dr Humayun Mohamand unveiled a manifesto that can be described as vague, at best as it communicated an idealistic makeover of Pakistan into what Jawad related as a shift towards  a self-sufficient welfare state without reliance on foreign aid.

The party hopes to do so through internal taxation – a projected Rs900 billion – and through urging top-tier state actors to relinquish perks which will presumably allow for more fiscal flexibility to divert into the economy. Mohamand shared PTI’s plans to increase public health funding from 0.8 % of the GDP to an estimated 2.6 % within its five-year-rule.  “We want to create a ‘Health Equity Fund’ for the treatment of the poorest of the poor,” said Mohamand. According to Jawad, alternate energy resources, such as the use of coal for power generation would help ‘solve the energy crisis’, reducing the vicious cycle of debt.

“We want to reduce our ministries to 17,” he said, revealing that Pakistan’s ministries, between 37 and 50 in total, were superfluous and institutions such as Pakistan International Airlines and Pakistan Railways could benefit from privatisation.

“The schemes outlined in this manifesto will require a lot more funding than the projected Rs900 billion that the party hopes to recover through firm taxation,” said journalist, Khalid Jamil, expanding that debt management, which is crucial to self-sustainability and future of economy, was not tackled in necessary detail within the manifesto.  “For instance, how is the party planning to generate the $7 billion required for its coal power project?”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th, 2013.

Correction: An earlier version of the article cited the projected tax collection in dollars instead of rupees.

COMMENTS (39)

KB | 10 years ago | Reply

@Mikaail: and who are you to call others responses illiterate - its none of your business , everyone has a right to express their views weather you like them or not and just so you know - pml-n will be history after 11th may.

Falcon | 10 years ago | Reply

@Mikaail: Part of the reason that many comments are pointing to Nida's comment is that many comments were published late, because of which many commentators submitted the same comment asuming nobody else has responded to it. Coming back to the issue at hand, debt management issue is simple, you need enough fiscal space to tackle that. As of now, our fixed costs are too high and the only way to increase fiscal space is through increase of tax. For details of this one as well as coal power project, please see my first comment under the article.

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