KARACHI: The Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, the President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, the President of All Karachi Industrial Alliance, the Chairman of the FPCCI Advisory Board, Mian Zahid Hussain, said that the country currently has to pay an average of $25 billion annually to repay external debts.
It is difficult to arrange such a sum of money to repay new and old loans received from the IMF, other financial institutions, and friendly countries.
Therefore, the government has to make efforts to roll over the loans because despite having all the resources and government machinery in the country, neither goals are being met nor has the FBR achieved encouraging results in increasing the tax net.
In this situation, the government is trying to make the basis of the economy sustainable and increase its size from $ 375 billion per year to $ 1,000 billion per year so that the path to foreign investment is paved.
The balance of payments is stabilised, which is welcome, but he said there is a need to significantly reduce bank mark-ups and electricity and gas prices.
He said that despite the increase in the prices of electricity, gas and petrol and the massive increase in taxes, loans are being taken.
The borrowing shows that the increase in government expenditure is much higher than necessary, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that if government expenditures are not controlled, the country’s debt servicing will also continue to increase, which will require increased taxes. Excessive taxes will damage the economy and increase poverty. He said that billions of rupees have been spent on reforms in the FBR for decades, but the desired results have not been achieved. The pace of implementing the elimination of subsidies and tax incentives, as demanded by the IMF, is slow.
In the erstwhile FATA and PATA, industrial production was several hundred per cent more than the local requirement, which was smuggled into the tariff area, causing a loss of billions of rupees to the country’s economy.
He observed that due to smuggling from FATA and PATA many tax-paying industrial units have closed, leaving many people unemployed.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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