Imran wants audit of defence budget
04 June, 2012
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| ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Imran Khan addressing a press conference on post budget at a local hotel. |
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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan called for auditing the defence budget of the country by bringing it in the knowledge of elected government as to where it is spent.
Addressing a post-budget press conference on Sunday, Imran termed corruption the biggest evil haunting the country, and felt that the menace had increased so massively that if not stopped, it would eat up the country. He again urged the PPP and the PML-N leadership to declare their assets.
The PTI chief accused both the PPP and the PML-N of supporting the status quo and urged their leadership to bring back the money they had stashed in foreign accounts, to show they were sincere with the country.
Imran called the new federal budget a total fraud, opining whatever tax was collected would be paid in external debt servicing.
On devaluation of rupee, Imran said that it pushes up inflation, while the leaders whose money was 'preserved' in foreign accounts benefited from it. He said the people of the country would not pay taxes as "their leaderships" had not been paying taxes.
He pointed out that 61% of the parliamentarians in the sitting assemblies did not bother paying taxes. He vowed to collect taxes from the powerful segments of society and reduce expenditures by adopting austerity measures, after coming into power.
Coming down hard on Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the PTI chief termed the shifting of his camp office to Minar-e-Pakistan a drama, saying the PML-N had supported the PPP for three years, all the time knowing where the country was going.
Imran said the PTI was the only party that had public support, and it could block the entire country if wanted. "This will, however, be an unconstitutional act, so it would not be exercised." He said that the details of assets of the PTI leadership and members of its Central Executive Committee would be posted on the party's website after June 30.
It's a dead budget: PTI
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has termed the annual budget exercise "meaningless" on the basis of the performance statistics released by the government the other day, saying that it is also like the previous years; a budget which is dead on arrival and grossly wrong in estimating the fiscal deficit.
"The government has presented a budget each year and then proceeded to completely ignore it and end the year with no semblance to the original budget presented," a PTI spokesman said on Sunday.
"Starting the year with a budget that set a target of 4.7% of GDP as the fiscal deficit, by its own admission will end the year with a budget deficit of almost 7% (including circular debt) and which in reality will probably end up close to 8%," he added.
The spokesman said that the Rs 250 billion, and growing, of overdue payables to the IPPs were not accounted for anywhere in the budget. "We are likely to end next year with another deficit exceeding 8% of the GDP and the economy sunk further in a debt trap."
He said, "The economic growth seen by the country in the last four years, which is the lowest in the last 50 years for any four-year period, is set to continue at an anaemic level for the next few years unless fundamental reform decisions are taken."
He said the budget presented by the government did not address any of the fundamental structural problems being faced by the country. "There is nothing substantive in it that deals with the high rate of inflation, the increasing unemployment and other problems."
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