Karachi, January 9, 2023: ‘Pakistan’s economy is deliberately rigged to augment the country’s vulnerability in the region so that the global powers that be can push Pakistan down to its knees and keep manipulating and exploiting it for their vested interests.’
This was stated by Dr. Ashfaque Hasan Khan, Pakistan’s leading economist, educator and former Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, in an exclusive interview with the U.S. award-winning magazine SouthAsia.
In his in-depth interview, Dr. Ashfaque Hasan shed light on how Pakistan’s elite will rescue the country from sovereign default, despite on-going economic slump together with the deteriorating living conditions. He said Pakistan has never experienced a sovereign default in the past and it will not face such a doomsday scenario in the future as well.
“I do not think that Pakistan will default unless the government wants it to be. Otherwise, there is no default in the offing. Pakistan is, in fact, exporting about three to two and a half billion dollars every month against the incoming remittance worth 2.5 billion to 3 billion dollars, along with the country’s total foreign exchange which is around 5 to 6 billion dollars. If we can reduce our monthly import requirements somehow and only import as much as we are earning then the rest of the money could be used for debt servicing, which is indeed very high,” he added.
In reply to a question about the losses incurred to Pakistan’s economy from April 2022 to December 2022, Dr. Ashfaque Hasan said the reserves, at the end of March 2022, stood at 11.5 billion dollars, but today it has come down to a meagre 7.5 billion dollars. “When the regime change operation against the Imran Khan-led PTI government started in September 2021, we had over $19 billion in reserves and at the end of February last year when the no-confidence activities were at their peak, we had total reserves of about $16.4 billion,” he stated.
“Because of the toppling of the PTI regime, the country’s treasury, in the meantime, has lost almost 9 billion dollars and its economic vulnerability has been further exacerbated. If we had these 9 billion dollars reserves in the treasury, there would be no threat of sovereign default today. Once again, these things have been intentionally manipulated and corrupted to increase the vulnerability of Pakistan,” according to Dr. Ashfaque Hasan.
Along with the interview of Dr. Ashfaque Hasan Khan, many distinguished writers have also contributed their articles in the January 2023 issue of Monthly SouthAsia (www.southasia.com.pk) as part of the magazine’s Cover Story titled ‘One Percent Republic.
Among the leading names are Saad Amanullah Khan, former President of the American Business Council (ABC), Farhat Ali, former President of the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) and Sirajuddin Aziz, senior banker and author.
