Zardari says budget failed to address critical issues

Author: Online

DUBAI: In his comments on the budget, the former president, Asif Ali Zardari, has said that even though his party would give its detailed observations–both inside and outside the Parliament–later, he, himself, felt constrained to remark that the budgetary proposals had failed to address several critical issues with regard to documenting the economy, improving the revenue collection, preventing the prevalent tax evasion, and addressing the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.

Spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar has also said that the former President was disappointed on seeing the financial proposals, which had failed to address some very fundamental issues. “It has miserably failed in arresting the alarming downslide of the agriculture sector, the growing frustration of government employees and wage earners and in tackling environmental degradation and climate change that are intricately linked to economic development,” he quoted the former President as saying.

Furthermore, as already pointed out by leading economists, the government has manipulated figures like the GDP growth, tax to GDP ratio, unemployment and inflation rates and fiscal deficit, he added

Budgetary proposals, which are based on manipulated figures and faulty assumptions, are fated to accelerate economic downslide and increase frustration, Babar remarked.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics does not exist as an independent institution and its present structure has lent credence to the assertion that figures have been manipulated.

“The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) holds the key to our economic development. Yet there was no hint as to how the government intends to address the rising frustration in smaller provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that the government has gone back on the decision of the All Parties Conference (APC) on May 28, 2015, to build the western route of the corridor on priority basis,” he said.

The economy will continue to be in a spin as long as the government keeps on borrowing from foreign lenders to retire its domestic debt. However, issuing foreign currency bonds at a rate much higher than the prevailing rates in the region is very disastrous for the economy, and further raises questions about the beneficiary of such arrangements, the former President said.