KARACHI:National Trade Union Federation and Home Based Women Workers Federation organized a lecture on deal with IMF: economical and political slavery trap.
Renowned economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, who has served federal and provincial governments as advisor was invited as the speaker.
Bengali said that the government has already gone bankrupt and it does not have dollars in its foreign exchange reserves nor it seems to overcome the trade deficit challenge. He said that country’s exports were of $24billion against the imports of $60billion and they were no way out of this situation but public-friendly policies.
He said that the inflation rate in the country was expected to rise to 20 percent in the coming days because to the wrong policies of the government under which it has dealt with the IMF. He said that more people will lose their jobs and the inflation will go up because the government surrendered before the IMF to seek the bailout package.
“IMF has no sympathy with the public. It, like all the banks, is only interested in getting its money back,” he said, adding that government’s practices and policies were similar to General Pervez Musharraf’s government. He said that the then prime minister and finance minister were brought in from aboard so in this government the finance minister and the head of the State Bank of Pakistan.
He said when a company which owes to banks go bankrupt, the banks takeover that entity. In the case of Pakistan, he added, similar is happening as IMF has put its representatives on the key positions to recover its money.
Criticizing the government, he said that there are around 14 to 15 ministries which are unnecessary. He gave the example of one national harmony ministry and said wonder what its significance is. He said instead of cutting its own expenses, the government was putting burden on the public.
Citing a research, he said that people have tended to drink teas instead of having a proper meal because it would cost them more. He said that the elites, on the other hand, have been unaffected by the inflation. He added that the crisis were also because of the elites because they were preferring imported goods on the local ones. He said that they wanted a lifestyle of Europe while living in Pakistan.He said that to overcome the crisis, trade deficit was needed to be reduced. However, he said, the government policies were unfriendly to encourage exports and discourage imports. One basic rule of imposing duty on something is that that it should be put on raw material rather than a finished product. It is total opposite here, he said.