• Federal Minister for Finance Miftah Ismail said that by taking tough decisions, the incumbent government had saved Pakistan from default
• Finance Minister  while speaking at a seminar on the country’s economic situation, said, “when Pakistan Muslim League government was formed, there was a total debt of 44,000 billion rupees and when he was sworn in, there were 10.3 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves at that time.”
• He further said that inflation in the country has increased to an alarming level, which is a painful thing, but the intensity of inflation will start to decrease from October

Karachi- Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Miftah Ismail said on Wednesday that by taking tough decisions, the incumbent government had saved Pakistan from default.

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, speaking at a seminar on the country’s economic situation, said, “when Pakistan Muslim League government was formed, there was a total debt of 44,000 billion rupees and when he was sworn in, there were 10.3 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves at that time.”

He said that a total of 36 billion dollars were needed during the current financial year, out of which 21 billion dollars have to be paid for the debt.

Finance Minister said that the subsidy that we were giving would benefit the rich man more while the poor man would benefit less and currently the fertilizer sector is getting a lot of subsidies.

Miftah Ismail said that because of the current account deficit, one has to borrow from external sources and there was a current account deficit of more than 12 billion dollars.

He said, “70 billion rupees have been given to the flood victims, while the IMF will be discussed this evening.”

Moreover, he mentioned, “the cotton crop has been destroyed across Sindh due to the flood, and many items including oil, wheat, and cotton will have to be imported from abroad, but now we are importing from abroad after seeing the flood like onions and tomatoes.”

He further said that inflation in the country has increased to an alarming level, which is a painful thing, but the intensity of inflation will start to decrease from October.

He said that some steps have been taken and some more will be done which will bring down inflation.

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