Federal Minister of Finance and Revenue, Shaukat Tarin, said that due to the PML-N’s bad economic policies Pakistan loses 20 billion and the country is now facing a very challenging economic situation.
“The current government has inherited an economy in tatters, with high inflation and huge circular debt due to bad decisions by the PML-N regime,” he said during a virtual press conference with Energy and Petroleum Minister Hammad Azhar and Minister of Energy Industry and Production Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar on Thursday.
He said that the former finance minister Miftah Ismail of the PML-N, during his tenure, increased the rate of oil development to Rs30, while the current government reduced it by Rs2 to Rs3.
Tarin said the government had to approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to support the deteriorating economy and accept difficult conditions such as high energy tariffs.
However, he said, the government’s focus now is on providing relief to the masses in the next budget 2021-22 and that is why it was communicated to the IMF in recent negotiations that electricity and gas prices would not be raised.
“Today the circular debt is decreasing and the government would take further steps to reduce it further,” he added.
The finance minister said that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the government has maintained success in bringing the economic growth rate close to 4 percent, adding that it will likely remain around 5 percent during the next fiscal year.
The finance and revenue minister said that it is a priority for the PTI government to reduce poverty by promoting skills development practices among four million families, in addition to providing them with housing and health cards.
He said that the government does not believe in charging new taxes to increase collection and that the objective of the greater collection will be achieved with the expansion of the tax network. “We decided to increase the Public Sector Development Program by 38 percent.”
