Former Finance Minister (FM) Shaukat Tareen has said the inflation will further accelerate and go upto 40 percent in the country while the government has presented budget to fill in the blank.
“We had hammered out the best formula to contain price hike and we had intended to provide targeted subsidy after importing oil from Russia at lower rate. Our government had devised plan not to allow the price of every commodity to increase till four months, he said this while addressing a press conference here Wednesday.
He went on to say government went to IMF which asked it to review the budget. Later government spiked the tariff of electricity. Instability in the country gives rise to economic crisis. I and Imran Khan had asked the establishment to prevent political instability.
He held government should have talked to Russia and acquired oil at lower rate. But they delayed it. Government did not take any decision for six weeks which deepened the crisis. They held meetings with IMF and told their tale while first mini budget came after one week whereby the prices were jacked up.
We had left the dollar at Rs 182 in PTI government , he said adding the load shedding is being observed due to shortage of oil. Price of electricity rose to 47 percent and inflation ratio has ascended to 28 percent.
He indicated the inflation was set 28 percent and growth 5 percent. Federal government will be unable to collect Rs 700 billions from the provinces.
IMF has asked government to scale up revenue budget 7500 billion rupees. The inflation ratio will further accelerate in next year.
He indicated government has slapped fixed tax on retailers while PTI government was collecting tax from retailers in digital way. In fact we have reverted to old Pakistan in terms of tax collection.
We had written letter to Russia, he said they should have gone to Russia and obtained oil at lower rate and provided subsidy to people.
IMF has asked the incumbent government they will not disburse the money till the arrival of budget, he added.
