HYDERABAD: Adeel Siddiqui, President Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCCI), has urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to impose economic emergency without delay and consult all stakeholders to find out solution for the crisis of foreign exchange confronting the country.
He said that crisis like Sri Lanka was glaring Pakistan. He deplored the fact that federal government had not yet appointed State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) governor.
In a statement on Thursday HCCI Chief said that current bloodbath in foreign exchange market showed the non serious attitude of present government. He said that trade deficit stood at $46bn in 2021-22 which was $16bn up from ($30bn) in previous FY2020-21.
He said that interest rate’s benchmark in Malaysia was 2.25pc, 3.5pc in Indonesia, 3.7pc in China, 4.75pc in Bangladesh and 4.9pc in India. But, Siddiqui said, the same was 15pc in Pakistan. He said that such situation would make it difficult for private sector to compete effectively.
He remarked that government should announce expected inflows of dollars through all sources like International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, etc., to halt this uncertainty.
He said that no business enterprises would be able to repay loans with such a high inflationary pressures and such a high interest rate. He said that letters of credit (LCs) of oil were opening now on a very high rate of dollar which was a big question mark. He said that this forewarned every individual that the country was going to face acute shortage of petroleum in future.
He said Pakistan was fast loosing trust of investors as Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) dipped below the 40,000 mark.
Adeel Siddiqui was worried over the fact that oil and gas sectors were reeling under Rs1.6trillion circular debt whereas power sector has a circular date of whopping Rs2.5 trillion. But, he pleaded, this was rather a wrong or hard time as rupee depreciated abruptly and disproportionately and this was going to affect circular debt cycle more. He was of the view that there was need to privatize energy sector as quickly as possible.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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