New IMF agreement: PPP sees devastating consequences in Pakistan

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to release the next tranche of $ 500 million to Pakistan after analyzing the country’s economic progress reports.

But the parliamentary leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the Senate, Sherry Rehman, said the country’s economy is witnessing unusual damage under the government’s “controversial and non-transparent” agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which causes devastation on Pakistan’s street, unleashing a huge tsunami of unbearable increases in utility and food prices.

In a statement, Sherry Rehman said that indirect taxes of Rs 1 billion to Rs 1.3 billion would increase dangerous levels of inequality.

Moreover, Criticizing the government’s economic policy, she said that the country’s total debt reached Rs 44 trillion (about 90% of GDP) of Rs 12.5 trillion, the circular debt is expected to skyrocket to an incredible Rs 4.6 trillion in 2023, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) fell 30% and the World Bank estimated growth of only 1.3% of GDP this year, the lowest in the region.

According to the agreement with the IMF, she said, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would increase indirect taxes by Rs 1.272 trillion in the next budget and the government would continue to increase the collection of oil on oil products to the maximum level this year and next year to raise around Rs 510 billion this year, instead of the budgeted target of Rs 450 billion.

“If this were happening in another country, the government would have resigned on its own,” she added.

“We also gave SBP reasonable autonomy to conduct monetary policy, but we never proposed to open the country to the ups and downs of international capital and its saying,” she said.

All we know is that the government is bending to comply with the IMF’s harsh conditions, imposing indirect taxes on the next budget and increasing the electricity tariff by Rs5 per unit by June 2021. Do they realize the consequences this will have on people? ” she asked.

“It is not enough to look at inflation, what the country needs are agility and a solid economic policy. People should not pay the price for the incompetence of this incapable government ”, she concluded.