ISLAMABAD : As Finance minister , Miftah Ismail, is living against hopes and hoping for restoration of the International Monetary Find (IMF) in a day or two, the rupee is not finding any respite as its value is sliding fast to go to historic low.
On Monday when Mr Miftah Ismail was building hopes of the masses by hinting at early restoration of the IMF programme after attending a meeting of the standing committee of the senate, the rupee was hitting the new low in the currency market . It closed at 214 a dollar in the local market on Monday at the end of the second session and at Rs 210 in the interbank market . This is the worst ever performance of the rupee against the US dollar . Pakistan is facing the worst economic crisis of its history . Its forex reserves are depleting fast and this situation is adding to Pakistan’s worrisome economic crisis . Despite alarming situation of the national economy both the ruling alliance and ousted political party –Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI,) are busy in doing political point scoring on hourly basis. Their leaders behaviour shows none of them is showing any responsible behaviour to take the economic crisis seriously and find out some solution to the growing economic woes of the country . The ruling alliance led by Speedo prime minister , Shahbaz Sharif , and ousted prime minister , Imran Khan’s party are preferring their political stunting over serious economic situation of the country.
Mitah Ismail informed the media persons after attending the meeting that the government was following a strategy to tax affluent and protect the low income group from the new taxation. He also informed the senate standing committee that the IMF had objection to the government proposal to raise taxable level of income . Earlier , there was an impression in the market that IMF was finding of the government to scale down its level of taxation on income . The government has proposed to increase the limit of non tax income to Rs 1.2 million in the budget presented for next fiscal year .
