All fiscal goals are fictitious and impossible to achieve: PTI
Hammad Azhar
All fiscal goals are fictitious and impossible to achieve, says PTI.Hammad Azhar, head of the PTI, criticised the new budget for having unrealistic goals.Ex-finance minister and prominent member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Hammad Azhar claimed on Friday that none of the new budget’s goals were practical or achievable. Additionally, the finance minister did not present any strategies to curb inflation or rescue the faltering economy.Hammad added, “All targets in this budget are artificial and not realistic like last year,” in response to Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s budget speech.
GDP
There was no basis for the stated goals of increasing GDP, increasing tax revenue, decreasing inflation, increasing imports, and increasing remittances. In a same vein, he mentioned that the finance minister failed to provide an explanation of his plan to lower inflation or salvage the sputtering economy, and that there was a figure fudging of Rs1,000 billion in the amount of interest payments and non-tax revenue. As a result of the economic downturn and the ban on the import of raw materials, industrial production has dropped by 25% during the past two months.
PDM government
He said the government was completely at a loss and had no idea how to get the country out of its current mess. “The budget has a new external debt target of $8.5 billion, but this would not be possible without IMF while PDM government seems in no mood to take effective decisions because they do not care about the economy, they are only concerned about PTI Chairman Imran Khan,” he continued.Meanwhile, a PTI spokesman said they expected Ishaq Dar to resign and apologise to the country for bringing about unprecedentedly high inflation (38 percent), halting economic growth (0 percent), and bringing the State Bank of Pakistan to the verge of default (with reserves at less than $4 billion).
Economic Survey
The PTI spokesperson claimed the Economic Survey FY2023 presents a bleak image of the economy in response to the budget speech. Under the PDM government, economic activity has ground to a halt, growing by zero percent this year (0.3% to be exact), compared to roughly six percent growth in the two years prior under the PTI government.As a result of the PDM government’s “epic failure,” 8 million employees will be out of job in FY2023, the unemployment rate will rise to 10%, and nearly 18 million households would slip below the poverty line, according to a spokeswoman.
SBP
Ishaq Dar, the finance minister, cannot tell the difference between nominal GDP and GDP computed using purchasing power parity, and therefore he frequently uses these numbers and stories to cover up his massive failures. Even Dar’s own party members are openly questioning the narrative he is spinning, and the IMF has refused to do business with the PDM government.”The spectacular failure of his ‘Dar peg’ policy has again demonstrated why we think he is unfit for this role; he has little knowledge of markets or economic policy in general. The SBP’s reserves have dropped to $3.9bn, which isn’t even enough to cover imports for one month, bringing the country dangerously close to default. The official confirmed that they were $10.5 billion at the VONC.
