ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and Leader of the Opposition Shehbaz Sharif have said that the people have rejected both the IMF budget and the government that brought it.

The size of economy was $313 billion when PML-N left government, he said. In the three years of Imran Niazi’s rule, the size of the economy has reached $296 billion.

In a statement on Saturday, he said that the purchasing power of Pakistanis has directly decreased by 13 percent. In the last year of the PML-N government in 2017-18, the per capita income was $1,560. In 2020-21, it has come down to $1,431.

He said that in three years of the PTI, per capita income has declined by more than eight percent.

“For the first time in history, our GDP has fallen in dollars,” the opposition leader said. When the PML-N government completed its term, there were 3.5 million unemployed in Pakistan. The PTI has rendered an additional 5 million people unemployed in three years.

Today, the number of unemployed people in the country has reached 8.5 million. The country’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high of 15 percent.

He said that in the last three years, the income of unskilled workers has declined by more than 18 percent. We took the growth rate from 2.8 to 5.8 percent in five years.

Inflation was reduced from 11.8 to 3.8 percent. Tax revenue doubled from 1,946 to 3,900 billion. In three years, the PTI's tax collection has been declining in proportion to GDP.

Shehbaz Sharif said that despite imposing additional taxes every year, the PTI government was lagging behind in tax collection.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021