KARACHI: As the opposition parties are confident that the forthcoming vote on no-confidence resolution would lead to the fall of Prime Minister

Imran Khan, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) warned that any new set-up would not be able to face the economic crisis created by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government.

The party also accused the PTI of deliberately “damaging” the country’s economy to fail the next administration after sensing its downfall.

The warning came from former finance minister Miftah Ismail, who told a press conference that the PTI government had started “laying mines” which would explode only after a few months when it would not be in power.

Mr Ismail, who is also the secretary general of PML-N’s Sindh chapter, claimed that the PM and his team had got ceased the $6 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme in another attempt to damage the economy and isolate the country in the international community.

“They [PTI] are making moves one after another because they want to create problems for the next government,” he said.

Accompanied by former Sindh governor Mohammad Zubair, he said: “Because they are so sure that they have to be out once the no-confidence resolution is tabled and they would not be elected by the people of Pakistan after their worst governance, they are playing all those tricks to create challenges for the new government. They are laying landmines and it would be one of the toughest tasks to fix the economy.”

He said the prime minister was offering subsidies, reducing petroleum prices and announcing relief at the cost of IMF programme, abandoning the international funding for the country only for short-term political gains, which would hit the economy badly in the longer run.

Mr Zubair said that worldwide the top three indicators of any economy were its GDP growth, inflation rate and budget deficit, but the PTI government had failed in all three areas.

The two PML-N leaders said the government had secured loans equal to 50 per cent of what Pakistan had obtained since it came into being.

They said former prime minister Nawaz Sharif during three tenures of his government had not secured as much loan as Imran Khan’s government had in the past three years.

“He [PM Khan] had promised to give jobs to 10 million people, but the fact is that he has made six million people jobless. As compared to this, the PML-N government by controlling inflation had lifted over 20m people out of poverty. The PTI government has given the nation only inflation, hyper taxation and higher unemployment,” said Mr Zubair.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2022