Daily Times

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry Sunday said Prime Minister Imran Khan had directed the attorney general for Pakistan to bring PML-N Quaid and former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif back.

Nawaz had left the country in 2019 after his seven-year sentence for corruption was suspended by the Islamabad High Court for eight weeks so he could seek medical treatment abroad.

He never returned and was declared a proclaimed offender by multiple courts and absconder by the government.

Talking to the reporters in Karachi, he said being guarantor either Shahbaz Sharif should ask Nawaz to get back or a legal action will be taken against him for providing a fake affidavit in this regard. The minister also criticised the Sindh government and said seemed the PPP was exacting revenge on the people of the province, says a news report. He said Sindh was the only province where citizens could not benefit from the health card due to the policies of the provincial government.

To a question, Fawad said the government will get the Finance (Supplementary) Bill 2021 passed by January 20 adding that the economy was fast stabilizing due to the prudent economic policies of the government.

He said special attention was being paid to the agriculture sector, while record production had been achieved in five crops.

Fawad claimed that when PML-N leader Ishaq Dar was the finance minister, the SBP deputy governor used to help him launder money. “We don’t want such institutions. We want strong institutions,” he said, adding that the move was also a part of the PTI’s manifesto.

The minister said the central bank’s autonomy would be in the country and the economy’s interest, reiterating that the government’s allies were behind it. Responding to another question about the SBP, the minister stated the government would appoint the board of governors for the central bank.

“We have not pawned away the state bank to the IMF,” he said, adding that the government had not borrowed money from the SBP even once during the last three years. “It used to be so easy to call the state bank and tell them to print more notes, like what Nawaz and Dar did,” he said. Lashing out at the former finance minister, Fawad said Dar gave directions to print “trillions”, which had drastically affected the economy. “So you never [bind] institutions to the point where they are no longer capable of performing. We believe in independent institutions,” he said.