LAHORE: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain Thursday said that the country’s economy was moving in the right direction, as record purchase of motorcycles, agriculture pesticides and vehicles was witnessed.
Talking to the media here, Fawad maintained that $55 billion debt, taken by the previous governments, would have to be returned during the next five years. Both Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari destroyed the country by taking loans, he said.
Fawad further said that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) vanished in the local governments (LG) elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). “Maryam Nawaz, instead of celebrating victory of other opposition parties in KP LG elections, should express sympathy with her party’s losing candidates and motivate them after their sheer defeat in polls,” he said, adding that “The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is still the largest political party at village council level in KP.”
He said that Asif Zardari used wheelchair whenever he was supposed to appear before the court, attempting to show that he was suffering from serious diseases. But after getting a bail from the court, he started raising hollow slogans and making tall claims, he added. He said that Pakistan People’s Party even did not have the candidates to contest elections in Punjab due to Asif Ali Zardari’s policies, which made the party unpopular in the country.
Fawad said that previous governments did not build any new dam after Tarbela and Mangla, but the PTI government started work on constructing new dams after which the water reservoirs were increased significantly. There were about 200,000 companies working in the country, out of which 157,000 were set up during the last 30 months, he said.
He further said that the PTI government put focus on development of agriculture sector due to which five major crops yielded bumper production, adding that production of rice, wheat and corn crops were historic while the production of cotton crop went up by 44 per cent.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Political Communication, Shahbaz Gill said on the occasion that time had changed now and the people understood how the PML-N and the PPP derailed the economic process and deprived the residents of Sindh province of their basic rights.
He said that questions were being raised that who spent such a huge amount in the wedding ceremony of Junaid Safdar, as his mother had claimed that she did not own any property neither in Pakistan nor in London, while his father’s monthly income was Rs 1,500. Whether it was Khokhar brothers, who bore the cost of wedding ceremony for being the contestant of mayor elections, he asked.
Adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Trade and Investment in the UK and Europe, Sahibzada Jahangir said that the people of Pakistan could not even imagine to what extent Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari owned billions of dollars’ properties in London, adding that people should hold such leaders accountable.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021