Most Pakistanis, it appears, have lost confidence in Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who is leading the country's firefighting to stave off an impending economic collapse. Dar has taken some steps like hiking fuel prices, cutting imports, and raising taxes to make up for the revenue shortfall - as demanded by the global lender IMF.
While Dar is confident that the deal with the global lender for the bailout tranche will go through, there is no word yet from the IMF. And Pakistanis are now running out of patience. The country is facing major job cuts, flour mills are shutting down, inflation has soared to 40 per cent on weekly basis, and the interest rate has reached an all-time of 20 per cent.
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While multiple factors are behind the current crisis, many believe that the current finance minister does not have the competence to deal with the crisis. Some also believe that even the IMF doesn't trust Dar as much as it trusted his predecessor, Miftah Ismail. Ismail, who holds a PhD in public finance from the Wharton School, served as finance minister from April 2022 to September 2022. He was replaced by Dar by the Shehbaz Sharif government in September last year.
Zain Siddiqui, a senior journalist, on Monday, said there was no denying the fact that Pakistan may just have avoided this painful reckoning "had it not been for the disastrous antics of our current Finance Minister Ishaq Dar". He said Ismail seemed aware of the looming danger and struggled proactively — and ultimately, successfully — to revive the bailout package from the IMF. "He (Dar) discredited Mr Ismail’s rationalist approach, which involved continuing to build trust with the IMF, and instead started running after foreign benefactors...," Siddiqui wrote in a piece in Dawn.
Today, reports emerged that ten top businessmen from Lahore and Karachi met Army Chief Asim Munir and Ishaq Dar as part of a confidence-restoring meeting last night. Ali Khizar, an economist and financial consultant, said the government was confident about the IMF programme and fresh investment from friendly countries. During the meeting, Khizar said, Dar gave the impression that the IMF was harsh and the government had to negotiate hard on interest rates.
Many Pakistanis reacted sharply to this meeting by the army chief and finance minister Dar. Usman Farhat, an IT professional and digital entrepreneur, said: "God saves Pakistan if the same Ishaq Dar is still their saviour. They have never learnt for 75 years and they will never learn in the near future."
Dr Arslan Khalid, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader and former minister for Information and Technology in Punjab, suggested that there can't be any confidence restoring with Dar being still the finance minister. He said the whole IMF mess was his doing and he had "always been a disaster in every tenure".
"I want to ask how is it confidence restoring with Dar being still the Finance Minister? The IMF mess is his doing and it’s nothing new. He has always been a disaster in every tenure but no we still want to keep him as Finance Minister coz the London Don wants him in this position," Khalid said in a tweet.
In a tweet, Kamran Khan, a senior journalist, said that army chief Gen Asim Munir had a 3.5-hour-long meeting with leading businessmen and industrialists of the country.
Rafiea, an opposition leader, said the army chief meeting with businessmen shows no one trusts Dar. "Ishaq Dar says he is an "Expert" so why did Army Chief take his place to talk with businessmen? This means no one trusts this Dar man," she said in a tweet, adding that Munir's duty is national security, not meeting the businessmen.
Dar's handling of the economic crisis has come under scanner as most of the policies undertaken in the recent past are reportedly threatening to cause more damage to the country. Jehanzeb Paracha, an entrepreneur, on Monday shared a report which said Germany's Ambassador to Pakistan Alfred Grannas warned that Islamabad might lose Generalised System of Preferences Plus status if it continued to block the import of electric vehicles from German companies Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi.
The GSP+ programme provides tariff preferences for imports to the European Union from developing countries. Under the programme, Pakistan can export goods to the EU market without tariffs on 66 per cent of tariff lines.
Facing a default crisis due to the low level of forex reserves, Pakistan has cut its imports to save crucial foreign currencies, which have depleted drastically in the past few months.
Paracha said another disaster was looming due to the "pathetic policies" of Ishaq Dar. "I wouldn’t even hire him as my Munshi! GSP+ is critically important for our textiles exports to UK and EU. This govt is an utter failure," she said on Monday.
A number of the country's biggest companies have halted operations in the past months as they ran out of raw materials or foreign exchange or both, Bloomberg reported in February.
Shehzad Ghias Shaikh, a noted podcaster, on Monday said Ishaq Dar may be sinking the Titanic but this ship was driven into the Iceberg by the PTI government led by former prime minister Imran Khan. "The fuel subsidy stunt by Imran Khan to burn the house down before he is ousted is what put Pakistan on the path to default," he said in a tweet.