Karachi: Former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has said that if Pakistan wants to move forward, it has to take four steps which include increasing exports, improving agriculture, educating children, and learning to live within its means.
Addressing the 37th Corporate Excellence Award 2022 ceremony under the Management Association of Pakistan, Miftah Ismail said that we need to look at our chador and adopt a strategy to spread our feet, the product of Pakistan is its people as long as these people are high. Pakistan cannot develop if they are not educated. India’s IT exports are high because Jawaharlal Nehru built MIT there in the 1960s.
The former finance minister said that when petroleum products were subsidized during the Imran Khan era, the price of fuel in Pakistan became cheaper than Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. No country in the world gives subsidies to petroleum products.
He said that Pakistan’s production capacity for every consumption is low and despite being an agricultural country importing edible oil, cotton, dal, and gram, Pakistanis think to sell domestically and compete with the outside world.
Miftah Ismail said that vehicles worth two billion dollars and mobile phones worth two billion dollars are imported in Pakistan, while the vehicle industry has 500 percent protection. If the imports of Pakistan are 80 billion dollars, then the exports should be the same or the imports will have to be reduced, people in Pakistan will have to be forced to export.
He said that I had told the Prime Minister that an additional tax of 5% should be imposed on the company that does not export 10%, while an index tax of 25% was imposed on IT, which can keep 35% of the money abroad.
Miftah Ismail said that Pakistan had 10 and a half billion dollars and it seemed that Pakistan would default in the next few months. It is a law in the world that if there is no foreign exchange for three months of imports, no one gives loans and swearing oath. Later, the IMF went for negotiations and they said that they will give loans after seeing the budget.
The former finance minister said that our growth model is wrong, in the previous government, the richest people were given a loan of 570 billion rupees at only one percent.
