Former finance minister Miftah Ismail has said that Ishaq Dar destroyed Pakistan industry for his ego as he needlessly antagonized the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wasting precious time which resulted in depleting the country’s forex reserves.
It should be noted that the country’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves further fell by $202 million during the last week.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s weekly report issued on Thursday, total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at $8.54 billion as of February 3, 2023, compared to $8.74 billion as of Jan 27, 2023.
During an interview with Kamran Khan on Dunya News, the former finance minister said that the current government’s incompetence brought the country to the point where now we had to agree to more strict IMF conditions.
“The blame lies with Ishaq Dar whose ego destroyed the industry,” Miftah added.
Moreover, in another interview on DawnNews, the PML-N leader said that Pakistan would have to enter another International Monetary Fund (IMF) program after the current one ends in June due to declining foreign exchange reserves.
“When this [program] ends in June, we will probably not have much more than $10 billion in reserves, if that. That would be about a month and a half of import cover,” he said. Consequently, the country would have to approach the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for loans, which would require it to enter another IMF program.
