Miftah Ismail, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi term budget ‘anti-people’

ISLAMABAD: The opposition has termed the annual fiscal budget 'anti-people' that according to them it only contained forged figures and pack of lies to throw dust in the eyes of the people.

Former finance minister Miftah Ismael told The News that the government has stated that the budget deficit would be 3,990 billion, but actually it would be above 5,000 billion that would further deteriorate the national economy.

He said the present government never ever achieved its target of tax collection and now it says that it would collect 5,829 billion, which they apparently cannot do due to their inefficiency and lack of proper policies.

To a question, he said everyone was expecting that the government would take strong measures to address the issue of unprecedented price hike, but it has practically done nothing and made futile announcement that would not work to provide relief to the people.

He said the government has allocated Rs6,000 million for ML-I in the annual fiscal budget and total cost of this project is 1,119,307 million, which means it would take 186 years to complete this project.

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told this correspondent that the government first tried to hide its inefficiency behind false claims about the PML-N government and then behind the coronavirus pandemic.

“They cannot present pro-people budget because they have already agreed terms with donor agencies to make lives of the people miserable with rising price hike, unemployment, power loadshedding and declining national economy,” he said.

He said the present government has increased debt manifold in last three years and now it plans to incur more debt so that the future of next generations would be kept mortgaged in foreign banks.