KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Saturday rejected the federal government claims of economic progress.

In a statement, Bilawal said that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government by making ‘false’ claims about economic development was rubbing salt into people’s wounds. “The government, which has left masses at the mercy of inflation and under whose nose millions of people are now below the poverty line, should feel ashamed while making such frivolous claims,” Bilawal remarked.

On the other hand, he claimed that Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government in Sindh had not only brought down the poverty ratio by 7.6 percent but today per capita income in the province was the highest in the country.

He further said that ever since the PTI government had come to power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the poverty ratio in the province now stood at 27 percent after the jump by 8.9 percent. “Now the situation has come to such a pass that while on one hand poverty ratio in the country is increasing, but on the other hand Prime Minister Imran Khan is contemplating levying tax on the pensions of retired employees,” he regretted.

He categorically stated that PPP strongly rejected the government’s plan to levy 10 percent tax on the pensions of old retired employees. “My party will continue to confront PM Imran’s anti-people policies on all fronts,” the PPP chairman vowed.

Bilawal was of the view that those who had voted PTI to power had put the entire nation in a quandary.

At the same time, he prophesied that PM Imran had no political future since he was to blame for the country’s economic mess.