ISLAMABAD, Oct 31: Leader of the Independent Senators group, Naib Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Senator Prof. Khurshid Ahmed on Friday warned the government against what he said falling back into the IMF trap. He said the majority of senators in last Senate session had opposed this option.

“Majority of the Senators in the debate expressed their strong reservations over the IMF loan”, he said while talking to newsmen after attending the meeting of Functional Committee of the Senate on Human Rights.

He said the IMF and the World Bank were instruments of American imperialism and over the last 50 years the cliental of IMF had shrunk from 57 to hardly half a dozen at present thanks to the IMF conditionalities.

The conditionalities often led people to starvation as in the process the sectors which needed support and subsidies were ignored.

He said these sectors were also the victim of free market philosophy, liberalization, deregulation, tight monetary policy and flexible exchange rates.

Inflation is a serious problem today but it could not be addressed by tight monetary policy of maintaining interest rates at a high level.

Similarly, due to 30 per cent devaluation of Pakistani rupee in the last few months, the volume of external debt has increased to Rs900 billion.

“I am therefore taking this opportunity to warn the government that instead of going to IMF it should pursue other avenues of resource mobilization some of which are: drastic restructuring of expenditure, effective incentive for extension in agricultural and industrial production, revisiting exchange rate, reduction in interest rate as well as easing other investment constraints.

Law and order in the country needed to be improved to enable the economy to revive. A comprehensive and consistent economic policy is needed.