KARACHI: "We should not allow IMF to dictate its own terms for peanuts as loan, in this way we are harming living conditions of most vulnerable people and protecting rich elite." Ali Ashraf Khan Chairman of Pakistan Commercial Exporters of Towels Association said talking to Daily National Courier.

He said that serious rethinking is required to reverse manmade super inflation destroying our national fabric and pushing Pakistan towards anarchy. Need of hour is to arrest this political hypocrisy and oversee our homegrown plans and hire qualified foreign experts to manage statecraft. Abolish all GST and taxes imposed since 2019 onward, plug leakages of revenues and smuggling of food grains to come out of stigma of 9th review with IMF, because strength of nation is in its people not usurpers in democracy produced through engineering and manipulation. 

Ali Ashraf Khan stated that mockery of democracy is visible when holders of constitutional positions fail to assert their authority and rogue politicians and rogue bureaucrats provide room to IMF and donors to claim ownership. Our state is falling from within economically, financially and politically.

Pakistani vegetable and fruits exporters participated in Berlin Fruit Logistica fair. Due to TDAP failure we lost opportunity to capture share that we take every year, he lamented. He said our No-1 issue is our liquid foreign exchange reserves are declining sharply touching less than $ 3 billion in first week of February to provide grounds to Fitch to downgrade sovereign rating to "CCC-" and IMF to finally control our economic and financial ministries. All this is cumulative effect of nepotism, exploitation and corruption. Bhutto laid foundation of fudging and doctrine of figures that people were never shown real health of national economy. Dr. Mubashar Hassan, Rana Muhammad Hanif Khan and Hafiz Pirzada were appointed Finance Ministers having zero knowledge of finance, he added.  

Published in The Daily National Courier, February, 16 2023

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