LAHORE: The main objective of the IMF bailout package is to sell out major state institutions including railways, PIA, Steel Mills and Wapda to collect sufficient amount to pay off the loans of the country, says Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Senator Sirajul Haq.

He was speaking to a traders’ delegation headed by Asif Raihan Dar and Waqas Butt, which called on him at Mansoora on Wednesday.

Haq said the amount of loan was so high that a major part of the budget went in the payment of interest and the actual loan amount remained the same.

Stating that the agreement with the IMF was not in the national interest in any manner, the JI chief said the matter was not confined to grant of loan as the IMF also influenced foreign and domestic policies of the country.

He said this agreement would allow IMF’s direct interference in the national affairs. The objective was to destroy the country’s economy and it could end up placing the country’s nuclear assets under the international control.

Haq said political independence was not conceivable without economic independence. If the government has failed on the economic front, it would also collapse on the political front, he feared.

He said that like the previous governments, the PTI government was also dependent on the IMF. He said the PTI which had been constantly opposing the amnesty scheme in the past, was now offering it by itself. He said the amnesty scheme was a method to whiten the black money of the plunderers.

He said if the PTI was to blindly follow the past rulers, why did it talk so much about “tabdeeli” and made tall claims.

Haq said that curbing the small traders at the behest of the IMF was unjust. He said increasing taxes on small traders and businessmen would neither improve trade nor increase exports. On the other hand, it would lead to closure of small businesses and render thousands of workers jobless.

He said the PTI had been claiming that foreign investors would flock to the country and make heavy investment but the government policies had resulted in heavy losses to investors and the flight of the capital from here.

BALOCH: Meanwhile, JI Naib Emir Liaquat Baloch, who is chief of the party’s Political Affairs Committee, said the PTI government was repeating the amnesty scheme which it had been criticising in the past.

Addressing the JI consultative body in the city, he said the present government was committing all those blunders and crimes for which it had been blaming the past regimes, and it appeared that the PTI thinking about those actions or policies had totally changed.

Baloch said the masses had already lost their patience because of price hike, unemployment and high utilities’ bills but the government was inflicting another blow on the people every moment. It appeared that the next budget would be prepared by the IMF.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2019