PTI leaders held a press conference to give a rundown of the state of economic measures which provide a picture of how bad Pakistanis are struggling.
“We left the sensitive price index at 17% in March and it is three times higher at 42% right now,” said Shaukat Tarin, who was flanked by Hammad Azhar and Jamshed Iqbal Cheema in Lahore on Tuesday.
The monthly CPI under the PTI was 12.2% and today it is 25%. “Petrol and diesel have gone up 100%.”
Onions are tomatoes are more expensive and lentils, the poor man’s food, are 60% more expensive compared to last year, he said.
The government is spending less on development, the exports have gone down from Rs3.1b to Rs2.2b in three months and even remittances have sunk.
Tarin questioned why the IMF did not hold this government to account, just as it did the PTI. “Five mini budgets have come and one more is due,” he warned. “They say inflation will be 11.5% but their own State Bank says it expects it to cross 20%.”
Tarin predicted that this government will accumulate Rs20 trillion in debt at the rate they are going. And the measure by which the world looks at your chances of defaulting has also gone up. Six billion dollars of reserves have been eaten up.
Hammad Azhar said that fuel prices have gone down globally about 30% but they are rising in Pakistan because in July this government imported 70% more than it needed at higher rates. Attock refinery has so much in stock, bought at expensive rates, that they may need to shut. Now that global prices are down, this government is sitting on a full inventory at high rates. Additionally, it bought that fuel at an exchange rate which was Rs8 higher than the dollar’s market rate.
Azhar added that 10% less power was produced in Pakistan as well. And Karachi is paying Rs50 per unit for electricity because of taxes.
More than that, Cheema said that 90% of Sindh’s cotton crop has been destroyed in flooding, which he claimed could have been mitigated if the LBOD had not flooded. The Left Bank Outfall Drain is supposed to drain all of Sindh’s water from Khaipur downstream to the sea. But it has been encroached on over the years.
