WEB DESK
Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Wednesday rejected a white paper on the national economy issued by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) the other day, terming the narrative of the poor state of the economy as ‘misleading’.
Largely comparing the economic performance of the PTI tenure to that of the previous tenure of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Dar said that they strengthened the national economy and handed it in a good state to the PTI in 2018.
But mismanagement by the PTI ruined the national economy, he said, noting that they improved the economy while working dealing with challenges such as heavy expenditures on ensuring better security in the country apart from tackling crushing load shedding and circular debt.
Recalling the economic feats achieved by the PML-N government from 2013 to 2018, Ishaq Dar said that they oversaw a period where the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country improved from $244 billion to $356 billion.
“During our tenure, we increased the size of the country’s economy by $112 billion in comparison to the PTI raised $61 billion in their last tenure from 2018 to 2022,” he added.
Economic chaos due to mismanagement of 42 months of PTI
A visibly angry Ishaq Dar said that the current economic chaos in the country was the outcome of the 42 months of economic mismanagement of PTI, not the result of eight months of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government at the helm.
Federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal chimed in that the terms for the IMF loan had been agreed to by the PTI government. He further said that the PTI never tried to control the prices of commodities.
