Dar chides those issuing default dates
Business
Says Pakistan to meet all international obligations
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News/Web Desk) – Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday yet again blasted those spreading the notion that Pakistan was going to default. Those predicting and giving default dates should be ashamed to themselves, he said – in a clear reference to Miftah Ismail but without naming him.
The latest criticism directed at Miftah – the former finance minister who was replaced by Dar – comes just days after Defence Minister Khawaja Asif directly told him in a tweet that there was no justification to target his own party although he might be unhappy with the decision of his removal from the cabinet.
He reminded the disgruntled PML-N leader from Karachi that it was the PML-N which had given him the finance minister portfolio twice.
Addressing a business delegation, Dar said some people had the desire to see Pakistan default but it won’t happen, said the finance minister who mentioned that the government would meet all external financial obligations on time. Pakistan had assets worth trillion dollars, he added.
The reason behind economic downturn, Dar noted, was political instability. There were multiple challenges and all the problems could not be solved in days, he said.
Miftah had recently again predicted that Pakistan faced default by October without a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The delay in the IMF programme had pushed the country's economy into current troubles, he added.
"It is clear that Pakistan would default without an IMF programme in the last quarter of this financial year, if not by the end of this fiscal year," he claimed.
Earlier on Friday, Dar had told a delegations of industrialists that the government had averted the possible default by taking tough decisions.
Last week, Dar had said during an interview to Kamran Shahid of Dunya TV that world’s financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were monitoring the political situation in Pakistan.
He said those targeting military installations would be tried under the Army Act. “There is a 90 per cent chance that PTI chief designed the attack himself, and if proved, no one will be above the law.”
Separately, the finance minister, in an earlier address to a Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) ceremony, said his team managed the present economic crisis in a way that he believed it might surprise the IMF.
