Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. PHOTO: WASEEM NIAZ
The Coalition Support Fund (CSF) is “a bad arrangement”, according to Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. “It’s such a long [and tedious] process. The country cannot afford to wait on $1.5 billion for a year,” he said in an interview with Dr Moeed Pirzada, Group Analyst at Express Media Group.
If it were up to Dar, he would rearrange the procedure and put at least 70% of the payments from the United States to Pakistan “on auto”, so that the country can get its dues in the same quarter.
He reiterated that the CSF is “not aid, charity or donation”, but the payments are reimbursements for the US using Pakistan’s land routes.
But the finance minister, in a press briefing on December 11, 2013, promised that the dues will be paid in the next two to four weeks. “Why has the $352 million been recovered?” Dr Pirzada asked. “I am not holding the key to the US treasury,” replied Dar. The US Congress has been notified, he added.
Regarding the rupee-dollar parity, he again blamed ‘pseudo-intellectuals’ and speculators for the ever-depreciating value of the Pakistani rupee, but he differentiated between the two groups of individuals. The pseudo-intellectuals, who are few in number, write irresponsible columns about how the dollar to rupee exchange rate would go as high as Rs115, he explained.
The speculators, who are holding their dollars, are making sure the currency is not stable. “Do you think we should allow our economy to be held hostage by a few?” The national exchequer suffers a loss of Rs67 million whenever the dollar exchange rate increases by Re1, he explained.
But you have not managed to retain the exchange rate at Rs102 as you had promised. “We are not fixers– the market has to play its role.”
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2014.
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