Former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail says that even after the agreement with the IMF is reached next week, the risk of default will not go away.
Talking to Geo News program Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada, Miftah Ismail said that to avoid default, any government that comes will have to go to the new IMF program.
Miftah Ismail said that the IMF is exaggerating by predicting the current account deficit to be 8 billion dollars, the friendly country is angry with Pakistan that Pakistan does not do what it says.
Earlier speaking to Geo News, Miftah Ismail said that today is a bad day in the history of Pakistani economy when the Pakistani rupee reached 300 rupees against the dollar and the interest rate also increased to 20% after 3% increase. reached
He said that it was expected that the interest rate may increase by 2%, but it has been increased by 3%, due to which the interest that the government has to pay also increases a lot, the government has a difference of 900 billion rupees annually and the private The sector also matters, both of these are very negative developments, but in spite of all this, we hope that an agreement will be reached with the IMF, so God willing, we will try, and we will move towards improvement somewhere. can.
Regarding the increase in the value of the dollar, Miftah Ismail said that when the dollar was at 240 rupees, there was no need to artificially stop it and especially in such a situation that when you do not have money, then the IMF If you leave the dollar free, it jumps from 230 to 260, then you make petrol cheaper and then the dollar increases by 30 rupees in the next two days. This is not a serious economic policy, but an economic policy. Playing along.
He said that if you have to stop the rupee in such an artificial way, then why are you stopping at 180, then stop it at 12 rupees, if you can set the rate with your intention, then make it 10 rupees or one dollar. Make it equal to one rupee, it’s all crazy talk.
The former finance minister said that friendly countries usually help us a lot, even in this situation China has given us 70 million dollars a few days ago, the government and the people should thank China for helping Pakistan.
He said that the first thing is to deal with the IMF, we will have to increase the wages of the workers in this inflation, those whose salary is 100,000 will also have to increase their income, inflation will also increase but We have to do it all.
Miftah Ismail said that Imran Khan broke the agreements with the IMF twice, Imran Khan did not increase the price of gas for two years even though it was increasing worldwide, we did not have enough resources to afford it, we Didn’t increase the price of electricity when we had to increase it during Imran Khan’s time and then in our government too, subsidized textile and other industries, these are all things that the government has to solve.
