KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum Mian Zahid Hussain has said that an agreement with the IMF is possible in the next few days which will help the government to bring stability.

He said the government is constantly swallowing the bitter pills of tough decisions while negotiating some conditions of IMF that include an increase in revenue target, implementation of petroleum levy and privatization of sick government units.

Delays in the agreement with the IMF have caused market instability and panic, and raised value of the dollar, while all efforts to overcome the erosion of the rupee have failed, he said.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the rupee is sliding on a daily basis; people and the business community are worried and there is a great unrest in market.

He said that political and economic instability was on the rise while foreign exchange reserves were dwindling, further reducing the value of the Pak rupee leading to a sharp rise in inflation and poverty.

He said that delay in decisions of the IMF, Arab countries and China to lend to Pakistan was aggravating the situation.

The banks have run out of the US dollars and they are using foreign exchange deposited by the account holders. Unnecessary imports are not being stopped which is increasing the revenue but collapsing the economy, he observed.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the rupee has depreciated by more than 32% in a short span as the Central Bank has not been able to intervene in the market due to foreign exchange reserves falling below the level of nine billion dollars.

The SBP has also stopped selling dollars for a month which has increased its demand, he said, adding that the rupee is depreciating sharply on a daily basis due to delay in agreement with the IMF. It has become impossible to stop the rupee’s depreciation which is making everything more expensive and also affecting exports.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022