Miftah slams govt for taking U-turn on IMF

–Says ‘you cannot run country on donations and by selling buffaloes’

Former federal minister of finance, revenue and economic affairs Miftah Ismail while criticising the government’s decision to go to the IMF, has said that the PTI government is taking U-turn.

In a tweet, he flayed the government for being incapable of handling any kind of situation. He said, I don’t want to embarrass the government but isn’t this diametrically opposed to PTI’s campaign promise? Remember they said PML-N took on a lot of foreign debt’. Foreign debt under PML-N increased from $48 billion in 2013 to $70 billion in June, 2018, an increase of $22 billion. But just the loss to Pakistani investors today in the stock market was $1.9 billion, he added.

PTI government, in another U-turn, has just announced that they will go to the IMF. I don’t want to embarrass the government but isn’t this diametrically opposed to PTI’s campaign promise? Remember they said PMLn took on a lot of foreign debt 1/5

— Miftah Ismail (@MiftahIsmail

‘And what is ironic is that PTI this year will take more total debt than the average annual debt we incurred. They talk about austerity but they have not cut any money from civil government expenditure. PTI is selling buffaloes while the economy is crashing’.

‘We finished the IMF programme and got rid of IMF. They are going back. Even during the fund programme we kept inflation in our term under 5pc. We left with the highest growth of 5.8pc in 10 years. We doubled the tax receipts. They are just trashing the economy’.

He said, ‘Gas, power, interest rates are all now expensive. To just bad mouth PML-N they have talked our economy down and created suspicion among the Chinese about CPEC. A minister calls going to Saudi a “begging trip”. This is no way to run the economy’.