Daily Times

Sir: Former Captain Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as the single largest party in the Pakistan elections and form the government with a very well known Tabdeeli slogan.

As Khan moves in, a major development we saw is that China has agreed to immediately give a $2 billion loan on easy conditions to Pakistan; a move meant to arrest the sliding official foreign currency reserves and provide much-needed breathing space to the new government, which would also be beneficial for CPEC. As he got elected with a huge margin, another development that was observed was that the rupee strengthened by 64 paisas against the US dollar in the inter-bank market, closing at Rs127.86 on Friday.

But one serious question arises. Will these elections prove to be fruitful for Pakistan’s political stability and economic growth? Pakistan’s biggest challenge is to contain the import bill that has surged to $60.9 billion in the fiscal year 2017-18. With reference to the report published in the American Magazine “Bloomberg” on 26th of this month, the new government under Pakistan’s incoming leader Imran Khan will need to move quickly to tackle a brewing economic crisis. According to the report, one of the first challenges Imran Khan will need to tackle is easing the foreign-reserves crunch.

In my opinion the five-year period of stability is needed to put the country on the path of economic growth and political development. Working with the coalition government and making a unified circle in all the provinces will be the best way forward. The present government must not repeat the mistakes that the previous ones did and I feel that Imran Khan would be much under pressure because a major chunk of the youth vote went to Imran Khan, who voted for Change and will keep reminding him of the promises he made.

SYED UMARULLAH HUSSAIN

Karachi

Published in Daily Times, July 31^st 2018.