Economist Yousuf Nazar has said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has no plan to steer the country out of the current economic crisis.
In a series of tweets, Nazar said that the PTI chief is a popular politician but he has no plan to save the country’s economy, which he had mismanaged during his premiership by violating the loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ‘maliciously’ reducing oil prices.
No doubt @ImranKhanPTI is popular but he has no plan to save the economy which he too mismanaged by letting the debt go out of control, violating the agreement with the IMF, & maliciously reducing oil prices when they were going up in international markets
— Yousuf Nazar (@YousufNazar) September 18, 2022
He said that the former prime minister’s foreign conspiracy narrative is naked exploitation of PTI supporters’ sentiments.
Criticising the PTI’s economic policies, the former banker said that net foreign debt had increased by $35 billion during the previous government. “He [Imran] lied about writing a letter to Russians. A lot of people do not understand that Russians never responded to Pakistan’s request to buy oil from them. They sell [oil] on cash terms [in non-US currencies]. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could have offered to sell diesel but he did not. Most of the debate is based on lack of knowledge,” he said.
“A big percentage of energy imports is LNG [liquefied natural gas] which we [Pakistan] imported from Qatar. LNG prices went through the roof and buying oil from Russia would not have made much difference to total energy bill. In short, a lot of propaganda which has little to do with facts,” he added.
Last month, the federal government slammed the PTI and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for ‘trying to sabotage the IMF loan programme’ after the provincial government allegedly refused to implement the conditions of the loan agreement in a letter.
In the letter, KP Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra informed Federal Finance Minister Miftah Ismail that the province’s administration might find it difficult to ensure a provincial surplus this year in view of rain-related damages. Ensuring surpluses by provinces this fiscal year is a major requirement of an earlier agreement with the international financial institution to revive the programme. The provincial government however insisted that due to the devastating floods, its financial capacity was majorly impaired.
However, the IMF’s executive board later completed the combined seventh and eighth reviews of the programme, allowing disbursement of $1.1 billion to the country.
