Our stock market was near about 6000 points and all the credit was taken by our financial wizard PM Shaukat Aziz who also claimed to have turned our economy around.
The stock market crashed again to 5000 points and is inching towards 4000 points. Who should we hold accountable? Should not PM Shaukat Aziz and the CBR be held accountable?
When the stock market was doing so well what were the reasons to sabotage it with their levy of CVT and the margin-financing scheme? The government claims that they wanted to bring the stockbrokers into the tax net.
That is fine, but was there no other way to skin the cat? Could they not have tightened their tax-collecting department, which is one of the most corrupt government departments. Is this the real reason or is it their greed to collect more and more revenue so that they can spend extravagantly? With the government expenditure shooting up specially the cost of the 60 plus cabinet which will cost Rs 200 million or more and the Defence budget which has been increased to Rs 189 billion - to safeguard Aziz's job - the government has to devise ways to increase their income by hook or by crook.
Has the government not learnt their lesson of netting the traders into the tax net through coercion. In Sindh the government were 70% successful but in the Punjab it was a total failure and not more than 20% were brought into the tax net even uptill now. The Finance Ministry and the CBR had to face violence and the power of the Punjabi traders. Why can't the CBR enforce the tax net in the Punjab, specially Lahore, to make up their lost revenues or are they untouchable because they are very powerful.
Aziz was responsible for destroying the middle class in Pakistan by destroying the National Savings Scheme (NSS). First the profits were reduced and then taxes were levied. The middle class for whom the NSS was established was driven into wilderness because they did not know where to invest and from where to earn their living. They were driven into the stock market about which they knew very little. Today the middle class has lost 40% of their investments thanks to Aziz and the CBR. The conspiracy to destroy the middle class is working well, the status quo has been maintained.
The opposition parties should take up this question in the provincial assemblies and the Parliament and prove to the middle class that they are their on their side, that is if they want the votes from the middle class.