This post has been typed on the phone so please forgive the typos.
This isn’t a political post or may be it is. The government has changed hands and people are tweeting and forwarding all kinds of statistics and it’s hard to fact check everything. As time passes, and the political temperature rises, no one will agree on the numbers. It’s already happening if the Twitter interaction between former finance minister and the current finance minister is anything to go by.
Posting excerpts from two recent Business Recorder editorials as BR had a neutral to slightly pro-PTI tilt and nobody should claim that these are biased facts and figures. The purpose is to have something to refer back to later on. Or as the urdu books of yesteryears defined the purpose of record keeping,
تا کہ سند رہے اور بوقتِ ضرورت کام آۓ
Pakistan procured 12,767 million dollar loans July-March 2021-22 (provisional) against the budgeted 14,088 million dollars with total provisional non-project aid at 10,114 million dollars (including budget support of 8,882 million dollars and short-term credit of 1,207 million dollars).
…in the first nine months of the current fiscal year [July 2021-March 2022] 70 percent of foreign loans procured were for funding government expenditure as opposed to paying off past loans — the constant refrain of the Khan administration during its entire three-year-and-seven-month tenure and as often highlighted by Business Recorder given that the bulk of the government expenditure was on current non-development heads…
The Economic Affairs Division data further reveals that the PTI administration procured foreign loans amounting to 49 billion dollars during its entire tenure — 39 billion dollars was earmarked for repayment of interest and principal as and when due on past loans though the past includes the period from August 2018 onwards with rescheduling loans (with a higher applicable interest charge), debt equity payments for sukuk/Eurobonds issued and interest payable on commercial loans procured.
In addition to this heavy reliance on foreign borrowing, the Khan administration raised its reliance on domestic borrowing from the 16.5 trillion rupees it inherited to over 27 trillion rupees when it left — an unprecedented rise of around 63 percent.
The release of the data by Economic Affairs Division shows that Imran Khan’s narrative that loans were procured to repay only past loans was not accurate and that he was misinformed by his subordinates.
Hence as per BR editorial,
PTI borrowed $12.7billion in last 9 months of its tenure , 70% of which went towards paying government expenditures and not paying off interest and principal on previous loans.
Of the $49 billion borrower by PTI in its tenure, around $39 billion went to service prior debt (with balance $10 billion going towards budgetary expenditures I guess).
BR concludes that Imran Khan’s narrative is wrong and speculates that it may be due to him being misled by his subordinates 🤷♂️. Though the next section shows that no one is being misled and promoting such narratives is PTI’s strategy.
For PTI’s (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s) political committee to say that “chief election commissioner has crossed all limits of dishonesty and partiality” is understandable, even if it is in typically bad taste, given how the political temperature is pushing the party to lash out at anything and everything that does not completely agree with its narrative.
PTI is wrongfully alleging dishonesty and impartiality to CEC and BR editors find it understandable. Must be in a very sympathetic mood. But then the editorial redeems itself in the next paragraph. I guess not many people read BR editorial as religiously as I do as this would have gotten the newspaper cancelled 😀.
Clearly, the party has still not digested that it was clinically, cleanly and very constitutionally removed from power; and its attempts to exaggerate certain facts, from the looks of things so far, and even bend the constitution and fill streets with hundreds of thousands of diehard supporters, did not work and it was still forced to pack up and leave.
I didn’t know that current CEC was PTI’s choice. I am as flummoxed as the editors of BR at PTI’s reaction.
…its actions, rather reactions, become harder to understand by the day.
CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja was PTI’s choice for the slot, after all, and the internet’s already made sure that everybody’s seen Sheikh Rashid’s ringing endorsement of Raja in a letter to PM Imran Khan at the time. Yet now that things are not going the party’s way, it’s started saying that Raja was thrust upon it by the so-called establishment.
It truly is a post truth world of PTI is blaming CEC for not replying to it.
for some reason, it’s also gone to town on ECP for not conducting timely delimitation of constituencies and delaying early elections, whereas the CEC is on record lamenting that he wrote to the PTI government no less than 15 times about the need to carry out the said exercise yet he never received any reply.
The pièce de résistance of the editorial is describing PTI’s strategy as نہ کھیڈاں گے نہ کھیڈن دیاں گے and calling out the PTI appointed president and governors for their partisanship.
Contrary to increasingly loud speculation, it is sincerely hoped that PTI, especially Imran Khan, has not been so embittered by the events of the last few weeks that they’ve really decided to make sure that nobody will play if they won’t.
Yet going by how openly partisan PTI appointed president and governors have become despite the constitutionally mandated neutrality of their offices, regardless of the cost to the country’s economy, security and/or reputation, nothing can really be ruled out.
The last paragraph is couched in words to appear directed to everyone but under the present circumstances, it is applicable more to PTI.
Nobody ought to need any reminding that the country stands at a very critical crossroads, and the slightest misstep could make it fall over the edge, default on its debt, and perhaps even be rubbished to the dustbin of history forever.
And it’s a shame to see the most senior politicians going out of their way to harm each other and not caring at all how much the country suffers because of it.
Other political parties and stakeholders aren’t any better than PTI. This shows that PTI isn’t better than them either when it comes to false allegations.