ISLAMABAD
Former finance minister and PTI leader Shaukat Tarin has said that higher growth registered in the outgoing fiscal year 2021-22 was a direct result of PTI’s economic policies, which put the country on the trajectory of economic revival before Imran Khan was ousted in April. Tarin and another PTI leader Muzammil Aslam, who was the finance ministry spokesperson under the PTI rule, held a press conference on Thursday shortly before the release of Economic Survey 2021-22.
Tarin said that Imran khan went to Pakistan’s friends and the IMF to rescue the country from economic woes that began before the PTI came to power. He said everyone knew how economic problems began four years ago when the agriculture sector was receiving little government spending and the energy crisis hampered industrial growth.
The former finance minister said that in the fiscal year 2022-21 Pakistan surprised the world by posting a 5.75% GDP. He said PTI’s policies in the past two years enabled higher growth for two consecutive years and in the current year, the country posted 4.4% growth in the agriculture sector and 7% in the industrial sector.
Tarin said that in March 2022 the country saw 22% growth, which was unusual. The former minister criticized the current government for setting a lower GDP target for the next fiscal year 2022-23 at 78 trillion, saying that the PTI was to set 8 trillion and remittances would have hit $32 billion.
This would have reduced the deficit to 800 million. Tarin expressed fears that inflation could grow as high as 25% or 30% under the current government, which, he said, had increased ghee and flour prices.
The PTI leader said that the rising inflation could precipitate an industrial crisis and unemployment. LNG and coal prices are going up the government is unable to control the situation, he said. =DNA
