IMF deal ‘shrouded’ in opacity, uncertainty: PPP

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Monday claimed that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s dealings with the International Monitory Fund (IMF) have been shrouded in opacity and uncertainty.

“The people are right to ask: who is running Pakistan now? From the way the country has been progressing, it is clear that the IMF is running the country by proxy, the government in Islamabad has simply become figure heads.

According to the new conditions, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will report directly to the IMF headquarters now, instead of the Cabinet or the Parliament of Pakistan. This recolonisation of Pakistan is unacceptable to us. We paid a heavy price for our freedom. Yes, we ran many IMF programmes before but never in this shameful tutelage,” Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate, Senator Sherry Rehman said in a statement.

She said, “The PTI government’s dealings with the IMF have been shrouded in opacity and uncertainty. Pakistan’s Parliament has not been taken into confidence while crucial macroeconomic decisions that may change the country’s trajectory are being undertaken.

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Parliament was kept in the dark about the scale and harsh magnitude of the prior conditions that the government had agreed to with the IMF. It is no longer shocking that the government is celebrating the deal with the IMF, because it has become tone deaf to the Pakistani street, but it has conveniently buried the terms of hard conditions that will be transferred to the people of Pakistan.”

She said that struggling to keep their head above the economic water, families have been unable to recover from the continuous price bombs dropped on them by the PTI. Now, this latest deal with the IMF has left the entire nation with severe financial and economic whiplash, she claimed.

This level of indebtedness, profligacy, and burden of prices on each household has never been seen in Pakistan before, she said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021