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Posted by admin in Domestic Policy, Economics, Politics & International Relations on October 12th, 2014
Islamabad: June 12, 2013
The Federal Government will announce the budget for 2013-14 this evening. Ishaq Dar, the Finance Minister, will be intoning and juggling figures, incomprehensible to the country’s 180 million deaf and dumb creatures. I laugh heartily at the regular comments of the super rich that the budget is the ‘poor peoples’ budget . The common people are not concerned because they have become stoics . They mostly live in villages under oppressive conditions without regular employment opportunities and without education , health care , potable drinking water and without electricity. The Government is not be trusted .
In the USA , the budget is discussed for an entire year i.e after its presentation by the President to the next year’s President’s speech . But then USA is the USA while Pakistan is Pakistan . Our Financial Year is July-June . From the 13th ,the budget will be discussed for a fortnight only upto the 25th.With the majority of members on the Government side , the discussions will be an eyewash only.
The only time when the country was not bored stiff by the high flown language of the budget was when Dr. Mahbub ul Haq was the Finance Minister in the mid eighties . He skipped over all the rubbish : the rhetoric before the actual budget relating to taxes and duties . He did not blame the previous governments of all wrongdoings under the sun. But he laid great emphasis on investment in the people viz. education and health which are taboo for the successive governments before and after him . He went to discuss the changes in taxes and duties . His budget speech was over in less than an hour .
Since the creation of the country , the common people whose miseries are bemoaned by every political worth his salt . While their condition is becoming worse with each passing day, successive governments blame the previous governments or the vagaries of the weather , the poverty line has reached 45 -50 % of the country’s population . The Government is levying taxes more than the capacity of the people to pay under the dictates of the donor agencies . The GNPs , the GDPs and the Per Capita Incomes are but poor indicators of a nation’s prosperity . The Government’s figures indicate the Per Capita Income is $ 1380 . Yet it is not visible on the people faces . The successive governments pride on the number of cars assembled locally and owned by Pakistanis , the number of motor cycles , the number of refrigerators , deep freezers or air conditioners assembled locally . It never shows the number of children without education and health facilities , the number who are without potable drinking water . The Government figures indicate the number of houses in the country or by cities . They never indicate where they are located in posh localities or in slums .
Prosperity and happiness are written on the faces of the people whereas the Pakistanis are glum and depressed . Countless people do not know where the next meal is going to come from . Education and health care is becoming expensive day by day . Even children in Montessoris attend tuition centres whose fees are around Rs 4000/- per month .All this tantamount to the ‘Education Genocide’. School drop outs are routine : the people inability to pay the expenditure related to education.
The fault lies with the interest based economic system. The experts have been trained in educational centres modeled in the West : by modeled by Bretten Woods financial Institutions — the World Bank, the IMF which are interest based.
Pakistan started borrowing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1950 on their terms instead of the Government exploiting the country’s resources . The Bank’s interest rates are based on commercial banks rates prevailing New York .
During the military regime of General Musharraf , the Prime Minister and Finance Minister , Shaukat Aziz , liberalized the imports of non essential items . Loans and credit , both foreign and domestic banks ( the latter to the influential few ), were easily available . Thus the elite lived beyond the country’s means . However , in the Civil Government that followed, the donors tightened their purse string in view of the adverse reputation of that Government . Resultantly , it went for bank borrowings and deficit financing both of them were injurious to the country’s financial health . During the past five years , the total , both domestic and external , ballooned to unimaginable proportions . One could visualize the grim face of Ghulam Ishaq Khan , one of Pakistan’s most stern finance managers .
Three recent statements made by prominent people merit attention :-
In the Capitalist system , most countries were in danger of a meltdown . They are borrowing from wealthy countries like Germany and France . The USA has to repay the Chinese loan of $ 16 Trillion . The country’s debt is equal i.e $ 16 Trillion .
Men and women both from the developed world and third countries are working for longer hours or they are working in two or three jobs a day to enable them to live in comfort but they are not happy . Leisure , like everything ,can be had but at a price . The question that arises in one’s mind “what at cost “ . The world has seen the failure of the Capitalist System . This is the modern version of ‘Slave Trade’.
Before the advent of the banking system , interest based income , the paper currency , the floating exchange rate , devaluation or revaluation , recession , stagflation ,the basket of currencies , people and nations traded either through barter or metals the most favoured ones were gold and silver . That is Islam advocates : the abolition of interest , the abolition of exploitation , the abolition of the Capitalist System and the abolition of paper currency . Allow the people to be happy and not in ‘human bondage ‘.
Muslim Government and Muslim scholars must do their homework and establish a framework as an alternative economic system based on the Islamic teachings .
To be continued…………
The writer is not a world famous Economist’
Mahfooz ur Rahman
Islamabad: June 12 , 2013
Posted by admin in Economics, Foreign Policy, IMRAN KHAN-PAKISTAN'S HERO & DREAMER, Nawaz Dangerous, Nawaz Sharif & Kashmiri Biradari, Nawaz Sharif Dangerous Man, NAWAZ SHARIF DICTATOR, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, NAWAZ SHARIF LOAN SCAM, Nawaz Sharif Malcontent, Nawaz Sharif Massive Corruption, NAWAZ SHARIF MUZZLES PRESS, NAWAZ SHARIF SAGA OF ABSOLUTE & CHRONIC CORRUPTION, NAWAZ SHARIF THIEF, NAWAZ SHARIF US & SAUDI AGENT, Nawaz Sharif US Agent, NAWAZ SHARIF US CIA ASSET IN PAKISTAN, Nawaz Sharif Womanizer, NAWAZ SHARIF'S ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN, Nawaz Sharif-The Prime Minister from Hell, NAWAZ SHARIF: THE LOOTER on October 9th, 2014
TORPEDO ; GOING TO HIT THE SHARIF GOVT . BEWARE
Imran Khan’s Masterclass Against Nawaz Sharif That The Entire Nation Failed To Understand:
As soon as Imran Khan announced his Civil Disobedience movement the entire opposition and twitterati erupted into a tirade of jokes asking questions such as, how would PTI supporters not pay GST on milk, bread and other groceries. Or that if they wont pay the utility bills the utility services would be disconnected and so on.
However, none of these so-called intellectuals were able to understand that what this Civil Disobedience movement is aiming to do is declare Nawaz regime a dictatorial regime and hence render all foreign debts that the regime would contract as unenforceable. As, I have already explained that a debt becomes illegitimate if a) the regime that contracts it is despotic and/or dictatorial and b) it was not spent on the betterment of the nation.
The entire long march is based on the premise that Nawaz Sharif and his party rigged the 2013 General elections and hence the regime is dictatorial and illegitimate. Before announcing the Civil Disobedience movement Imran Khan went into elaborate details of how the Sharif has previously used foreign debt to fill his coffers. What Imran was trying to do here was to establish a case that the foreign debts which this regime would incur would not be spent on the nation but would rather be laundered out of the country to power the business of the Sharif dynasty.
In simpler words Imran has told the entire world and specially the foreign lenders aka (IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank) that any loans incurred by the Sharif regime would not be enforceable on the future governments of Pakistan. To make it abundantly clear to our intellectual elite, Imran is telling the foreign lenders that if he ever came to power, he wont pay back the loans that the Sharif regime would borrow. This means that the foreign lenders has only one option left before them and that is to decline all future loans to the Sharif regime. Since, the Sharif regime relies heavily on foreign lending to finance its budget, the move would cripple the government and will bring it down to its knees without any bloodletting on the streets.
I once read a quotation that Brilliance hits a target that no one can hit, Genius hits a target that no one can see.
Imran’s masterstroke against Sharif is such an act of genius that the entire nation is unable to see the target that it has hit. All that PTI and its horde of social media jihadi’s now need to do is explain this to the entire nation that:
Since, we consider the Sharif regime as illegitimate, all foreign debts that it would incur would be illegitimate odious debt and hence would not be paid by the future Pakistani governments.
Imran Khan himself needs to do a better job and explain this to the foreign lenders that since the Sharifs always loot and plunder these loans for their personal gains, future PTI/Pakistani government would consider the foreign loans received by the Sharif regime as illegitimate. Once this is made abundantly clear to both the national and international audiences, it does not matter an iota if the civil disobedience movement fails to reduce the amount of taxes collected at the National level..
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