Pakistan minister blames past rulers for current economic crisis
Former rulers of Pakistan have ruined the 'national economy during their 10 years of misrule', Pakistan federal minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain has said. Blaming the past governments for the current economic situation in the country, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain believes the amount was being used for debt servicing could be used to offset the price hike. According to a report with The News International, the Pakistan minister said had the government not repaid 12 billion dollars in debt, the amount could have been used to provide subsidies in the prices of oil and electricity.
He further said that the country's current economic crisis was a "gift of the 10-year rule of Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif," adding that had the former rulers not ruined the national economy during their 10 years of misrule, the consumers could have been protected from the adverse effects of rising prices of commodities in the international market, the report stated.
Earlier, Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP) had launched a hunger strike camp against the Imran Khan government and said that he had not fulfilled the promises he had made with the nation before the general elections.
A senior leader of the Pakhtun nationalist party Ghulam Ahmad Bilour said that the prices of edible items, petroleum products and other daily-use commodities had almost doubled under the governance of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Pakistan's unemployment has jumped from 5.8 per cent in 2017-18 to 6.9 per cent in 2018-19, according to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
The first year of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in power saw an increase in unemployment in the case of both males and females, with the male unemployment rate rising from 5.1 per cent to 5.9 per cent and female unemployment rate jumping from 8.3 per cent to 10 per cent, reported Dawn.
(With inputs from ANI)
Also Read | 'Slip of tongue': Pak minister on Imran Khan's 'Osama bin Laden a martyr' comment
