Commerce Reporter
LAHORE: Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has said that the country would have defaulted had they not gone to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. Addressing a ceremony at Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Saturday, the Finance Minister said that the country had to pay US$36 billion as it had to pay off US$24 billion abroad.
“The country had foreign reserve of US$10 billion when they assumed the power. In April, US$3 billion also reduced in payments. We knew the situation before assuming the power. I told Shehbaz Sharif that the government would have to increase the petrol price,” he maintained.
The minister said that Nawaz Sharif had fulfilled the power demand by installing factories. “China and Bangladesh increased the exports when they had enough electricity. We have to increase export to avoid the trade deficit,” he maintained.
He appealed to philanthropists to generously support the flood victims.
Miftah Ismail has claimed that if the temperature in Punjab’s plains increases by 1 degree Celsius, the demand for the electricity in the country jumps by 800MW. He said that this year the country did not witness any spring. We went straight from winters to summers, he said. Khurram Dastagir – the minister for water and power – told me that our electricity demand hit 31,000MW, he said, adding that if Pakistan even produce 25,000MW, even then we would be experiencing 4-5 hours of load-shedding.
If we do any further load-shedding, people rightly protest, so we had to run all our power plants, he said. The minister claimed that per unit cost of electricity from Jamshoro power plant comes around Rs59. If you add line losses and theft, the average cost comes around Rs78.
“We had a circular debt of around Rs800b last year, so the International Monetary Fund (IMF) asked us to bring the power tariff to actual cost and abolish fuel subsidy. We were selling diesel at prices lower than that of Saudi Arabia and UAE,” the minister said. “Petrol pump owners knew that the government can’t continue giving subsidy on petroleum products, so they stocked diesel bought at lower prices.” Today, we are importing 200million litres less than what we were importing then,” he claimed.
Our textile exports are worth $20 billion, he said adding that a country that has a total export of $30 billion should not importing goods worth $80 billion.
Miftah, however, said that Pakistan’s imports are not that high. The real problem is that our exports are really low, he added.
