Pak economy weakening since 90s due to wrong decisions: PM

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CHILAS : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday said that the country’s economy has been weakening since the 1990s due to wrong decisions by erstwhile governments as industrial growth was damaged.

Addressing a public gathering at Chilas afterward, Imran Khan has said Diamer-Bhasha, Pakistan’s third biggest dam, is being made through which new milestones of progress will be achieved. There would not have been any better site than this for the construction of a dam, the PM affirmed.

“We are going to make dams on rivers following this project and plant one million trees across the country,” Imran Khan said while continuing that global warming increases when electricity is produced through furnace oil.

Projects in the past were made only to get votes, Imran Khan said while adding that imported oil was used to produce electricity in the 1990s which damaged the country. Expensive electricity affected the industry, he said.

“Unfortunately, we made short-term decisions and built projects keeping in view the vote bank,” he said, pointing out that decisions to install imported fuel-powered plants were made in the 90s, which piled up current account deficit.

The premier said that current account deficit increases when money is sent abroad and the currency devalues. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) inherited $ 20 billion deficit when it assumed power, he told.

Imran Khan said the PTI government is focused to uplift the living standard of the downtrodden. He said the government has enhanced budget of Gilgit-Baltistan with an aim to provide maximum facilities to the people of the region.

“I will ask Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister to reopen tourism under Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as the coronavirus lockdown left many people unemployed, Imran Khan said. The federal government will allow tourism by issuing a no objection certificate (NOC), the prime minister added.

China has built 5,000 huge dams while Pakistan has just two as the third biggest, the Basha-Diamer Dam, is being built, Prime Minister Khan said, vowing to build more such dams after completion of this reservoir.

Former chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar was one of the prominent personalities to have highlighted the importance of the dam. He and PM Khan found it the sole solution to the country’s water scarcity issue.

Speaking to The Third Pole, Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Agency Director Shehzad Shigri said the creation of the reservoir will have a devastating impact on the climate in the region. “Around 0.1 billion cubic metres of water will evaporate every year from the reservoir [if the dam is constructed]. This may change the climate and weather patterns in the region,” Shigri said.

He believes the dam will divide communities on both sides of the Indus River and displace 50,000 residents. Aisha Khan, the chief executive of the Civil Society Collation for Climate Change, also holds a similar views about the dam.

She feels that rising temperatures will accelerate the melting of Himalayan glaciers and a significant amount of water will be drained in the next 30 years. The expert said the solution doesn’t lie in new dams, but in improved water management and cropping patterns. = DNA