Old policies successfully stay in Naya Pakistan: Dr Shahida

KARACHI: Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) vice chairman economic affairs division Dr Shahida Wizarat has said that the first budget of the PTI government has shown that the same outdated economic policies are being shamelessly continued in ‘Naya Pakistan’.

Commenting on the federal budget she said the same failure economic policies and the same failure economic managers have been trying to expect result from their faulty policies since 1990s. She said great scientist Einstein has defined insanity as:  “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” She said the rulers of Pakistan and their economic managers are exactly doing the same thing.

She said we have mentioned several times that Pakistan is a resource-rich country and we have a lot of things from which we can generate adequate revenue for our economy. She said it is regrettable that we give these precious resources and facilities of Pakistan free of cost to foreign countries, both friends and foes. She said for example we are giving our land and air routes to other countries totally free of cost. She said many smaller countries who have got independence recently earn millions of dollars from their sea, air and land routes. However, we for last 72 years are still in a colonial mode and we offer everything to everyone totally free of cost.

Dr Wizarat said she has learnt that the government has given China clay resources of Nagarparker to a friendly country on zero royalty for next 100 years. She said we have given our lands and water to foreign water bottling companies free of cost and they are earning millions of dollars from these resources. She said we messed up our precious resources of Riko Diq and now we have to pay heavy penalties also for this mess. She said we are giving very costly salt to India for peanuts. She regretted that we give our resources to foreighners free of cost and run our economy on loans obtained from foreighners. She said these foreign debts are given on very strict conditions, which put a heavy burden on poor Pakistani masses.

She said this is not a financial mismanagement but a financial madness. She said we are rich country but we get costly foreign loans and our resources are spent to repay these loans and their interest. She said due to the harsh conditions of these foreign loans we destroy our economy with our own hands, with steps like rupee depreciation. She said even Hafiz Sheikh in his speech has confessed that Pakistani exports have never increased due to rupee depreciation. She said we are increasing interest rate without any reason. She said the government should have imposed taxes on the rich class but instead it imposed taxes on the salaried class. She said this government like previous regimes is bent to put more and more burden on poor people.

Dr Wizarat said in recent past many countries of Latin America also faced the same situation and their growing foreign loans resulted in economic crisis. Later, these courtiers decided not to reduce their rate of growth and they made a debt management strategy to gradually pay their foreign loans. They also decided not to go for debt servicing for ten years to pay attention to their own economic growth.

She said it is good to spend more on education, but we should also get results from the Higher Education Commission. She said the standard of education should increase and there should be tough accountability to stop corruption in education funds. She said taxes on cigarettes and cold drinks are good, but taxes on things like edible oil are regrettable. She said the announcement of massive privatisation is worrisome, as in past we have not obtained the desired results from privatisation. In this regard she gave example of the privatization of the PTCL, saying one billion rupees are still to be recovered from the private company that bought the PTCL.

She said Pakistan is not only facing ah government failure but also a market failure. She said market is not delivering due to corruption. She said the lack of merit is main problem of both government and private sectors. She said unless we address these basic causes both the government and private sectors would not deliver.