PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) politician Omar Ayub has strongly condemned the government’s anticipated “mini-budget”, asserting it will worsen the country’s economic struggle.
“This government cannot meet the IMF (International Monetary Fund) targets,” Ayub, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, informed the media in Peshawar on Thursday.
An urgent IMF mission is due in Islamabad next week to push Pakistani authorities to introduce a mini-budget for “course correction” in the aftermath of major “deviations” on performance targets.
According to the sources, this decision of the Fund’s abrupt visit has been triggered primarily because the Pakistani authorities failed to convince it about their intention of “course correction” through virtual meetings in recent days.
Criticising the government for its failure to stop the masses’ affordability from eroding further, the PTI stalwart said that the nation was swept by a “flood of inflation”, as he lamented the utter lack of constitutional and legal order across the country.
Pakistan’s average inflation rate stands at 8.7% in the current fiscal year, according to the Statistics Bureau, with the IMF predicting an average 9.5% inflation rate for the year ending June. October’s inflation rate was 7.2%, slightly above expectations.
