Shehbaz slams govt for crushing people under rising circular debt

By Our Correspondent

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) President and National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif, while expressing grave concern and alarm over the mounting circular debt, has said that the financial burden on the people and the country is increasing every day.

In a statement, commenting on the Ministry of Energy reports, Shehbaz questioned the government's management, saying it had increased electricity tariffs, cut down subsidy and still the circular debt was on the rise, reported a private news channel.

"How else would you define theft and incompetence? The people are paying record high tariffs and yet the circular debt is shooting through the roof. This report by the Energy Ministry is a charge sheet against the PTI government", Shehbaz said.

He said even after crushing people under additional Rs500 billion the debt was skyrocketing. He said over the past three years the circular debt had doubled to 2.5 trillion. From high transmission losses to revenue collection, the performance of every department of the Energy sector is dismal, he added.

PTI's claims of reducing circular debt to zero by end of 2020 had also fallen flat on their face. Instead the circular debt had increased at a higher pace since 2018. He pointed out that this was the consequence of producing expensive electricity through furnace oil and diesel to benefit the blue-eyed ATMs. This government added Rs464 billion in first year, Rs538 billion in second and in the third year Rs130 billion so far.

The PMLN president said the PTI government could not fulfil a single promise with the people or the federating units. They only know how to dump the avalanche of their failures, incompetence and corruption on the people of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Parliamentary Leader of the Pakistan People’s Party in the Senate Senator Sherry Rehman, while expressing her concerns over rising circular debt, said despite slapping across the board electricity tariffs, country’s circular debt jumped to Rs2.28 trillion in the last 3 years of PTI government due to mismanagement and incompetence.

“In 2018, it was only Rs1.1 trillion while ‘Tabahi Sarkar’ had vowed to bring down Pakistan’s circular debt to zero by Dec 2020,” she said in her tweet on Saturday, adding that rising circular debt had shoot up to Rs2.68 trillion in three years.

Sherry said public debt is equivalent to 98% of our GDP, while our circular debt has gone up from Rs1.1 trillion to Rs2.5 trillion and it is shocking that this government has been getting away with so much.

She said since 2018, electricity tariffs have been hiked by a whopping 40% and now ‘Tabahi Sarkar’ will soon impose an across-the-board electricity tariff of Rs3.34/unit. “Previously, a Rs1.95/unit tariff added a burden of billions of rupees on consumers,” she said.