HYDERABAD: President of the Hyderabad Chamber of Small Traders and Small Industry (HCSTSI) Mohammad Altaf Memon has said that for the sake of an instalment of only $ 900 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the government has destroyed the country’s economy.

He said that due to expensive electricity and rising prices of gas and petroleum products, factories and industrial zones were already in a state of turmoil. And yet the coalition government imposed a supertax on major industries — including cement, fertiliser and LNG, banking, automobile, oil and gas, sugar, steel, chemicals, beverages and aviation — which was “equal to closing down these industries”.

He said that these industries created most of the employment opportunities in the country as they provided jobs to millions, and pointed out that soon after Finance Minister Miftah Ismail’s speech about the “revised federal budget”, the Karachi Stock Market crashed and fell by 2176 points, causing a loss of Rs 230 billion to the traders. This was the third time that the exchange had crashed in the last 11 weeks.

Mr Memon said that the economic policies of the present government were beyond the comprehension of traders and industrialists and it seemed as if the country was rapidly moving towards default.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022