KARACHI: We are rushing fast towards “A Broken Economy” with serious financial crisis and mass joblessness. A Broken Economy is where Inflation and interest rate moves continuously towards the higher side, said Ateeq Ur Rehman, an Economic and Financial Analyst.

Due to expensive cost of borrowing it is difficult for a common man to add finance to his business or entity for expansion or to create margin to fight inflation. Micro financing through banks is unbearable, he said.

Millions of household have been struggling to make their ends meet and being crushed due to Covid pandemic, high energy prices, currency devaluation, hike in gas and POL products, etc. This is a continuous apathy without any end.

He said locally, to run the affairs we are borrowing persistently. Our external debt is historically high now, which is nearly $122.5 billion that is almost an increase of $26 Billion in last 3 years. This is directly affecting the momentum of economic stability and consequently bringing towering effect on a common man, said Ateeq.

Moreover, the trade gap is ballooning day by day with a vast difference between imports and exports. "We have touched nearly $70 billion for importing commodities like POL products, coal, industrial raw material, agriculture produce, etc."

"Whereas the exports are below $25 billion; otherwise we can diversify and focus on exports of IT, textiles, medicines, poultry, dairy, sea foods, rice, fruits, leather goods, salt, marble, surgical goods, motorcycles, furniture, etc."

He added that electric, gas, petroleum tariff hikes without tackling the deep rooted consequences will not work. The government needs to carefully weigh the proposals before making a final decision, since it is going to have quite a deep impact on the vast majority of the people and not a limited number of them.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021