Saudi Arabia & China will help Pakistan soon, Dar

Islamabad: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has said that economic management will improve the situation and Pakistan will not default, Saudi Arabia will help Pakistan soon while China will also support us under its system.

While holding a press conference along with the economic team, the finance minister responded to PTI’s white paper and said that the statistics and comparisons made by PTI in the white paper were not correct and it was out of context in which impartial comparisons were made. An attempt was made to mislead the public.

He said that the comparison neither took into account the global cycle of inflation nor included the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war. The claim is incorrect as the fiscal deficit was 5.8%.

He said that similarly the claim that PTI reduced the fiscal deficit in one year is also false, the fact is that the fiscal deficit had increased to 7.9 percent in 2019.

He said that it is important to bring before you the facts of the white paper released by PTI because all the decimals and figures were presented in it as baseless, PDM got the government after April 2022, PDM TI did not comment on the increase in oil prices in the global market, nor did it comment on the floods.

Ishaq Dar said that the IMF had earlier said that the economic growth rate this year would be 2.7 percent.

The finance minister said that the budget deficit in 2018 was 5.8% not 7.6%, the economic growth rate in 2018 was 6.1% not 1.5%, the economic growth rate in the first year of PTI was 3.12%, inflation in 2018 was 4.7%, In the first year of PTI, inflation was 7.3 percent and interest rate was 7.5 percent, while the average GDP growth during the five-year tenure of Pakistan Muslim League-N was 4.7 percent.

Ishaq Dar said that in July 2019 interest rate was taken to 13.25%, PTI claimed to provide 55 lac jobs. According to official data, 3.2 million jobs are created every year, but opportunities are not provided to the youth.

The finance minister said that by 30 June 2023, the foreign exchange reserves will improve, economic management will improve the situation and I am hopeful that Saudi Arabia will help Pakistan soon, while China will also support us in a short time because they has its own system.

He added that focusing on privatisation, all this cannot be done in a day. Everyone in the National Security Committee was also satisfied, everyone agreed to work as a team, what has happened to the PTI government. The federal minister said that for the current fiscal year, FBR has set a revenue target of 7470 billion rupees, the current government has collected more than 3400 billion revenue in a short period of 6 months.