Ishaq Dar returns home after almost five years

LAHORE: Having left the country for treatment in United Kingdom on October 27, 2017, former finance minister Ishaq Dar has finally returned home on Monday evening after having spent four years and almost 11 months in England. The PML-N critics contended that Pakistan’s external debt during Dar’s tenure as finance minister had surged from roughly $61 billion in June 2013 to $83 billion in June 2017.

Ishaq Dar had left the country on October 27, 2017 to attend a one-day regional economic conference but instead of coming back to Pakistan, he first flew to Saudi Arabia to meet former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and then decided to go to the United Kingdom.

He had then written a letter to the then prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, stated: “Immediately after performing Umrah on October 28, 2017, I felt acute pain and heaviness in the chest, and on the consultation of the local physicians, was advised to immediately consult my cardiologist, while my medical tests in UK also showed diffuse coronary heart disease and a possible Ischemic heart ailment.”

On November 22, 2017, the then prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had approved Ishaq Dar’s ‘medical leave,’ whereby releasing from all his responsibilities. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi also sanctioned ‘medical leave’ in the afore-mentioned case the day, the government had begun road-shows in the Middle East to raise $2 billion to $3 billion from international capital markets so that the mounting pressure from the official foreign currency reserves could be relieved. The PML-N critics contended that Pakistan’s external debt during Dar’s tenure as finance minister had surged from roughly $61 billion in June 2013 to $83 billion in June 2017.

He was supposed to return to the country before February 21, 2018 in order to take a cabinet’s portfolio but he did not come. In an accountability court where Dar was facing corruption reference, his legal team had informed the court that their client could not travel for at least six weeks due to medical reasons.