KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President of Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), Mian Zahid Hussain said the government should provide interest-free loans to the people, shopkeepers and industrialists for solar energy, wind power plants should be set up, corporate farming should be introduced and self-sufficiency in agricultural commodities should be achieved. Sick units should be privatised as ignoring these reforms would be economic suicide.

He said the whole world has been pushed into an economic crisis by the developed countries in an attempt to punish Russia. Mian Zahid Hussain said that millions of people are falling below the poverty line and the number of insecure people is steadily rising.

He said that rising inflation has eroded the purchasing power of the people, hitting the demand for all commodities except food all over the world, which is wreaking havoc on the productive sector. Mian Zahid Hussain said that dozens of countries were using the funds allocated for the welfare budget for the purchase of weapons, which was giving rise to human tragedy.

Many countries, including the United States, are on the brink of recession, with no prospect of an end to the war, nor have sanctions against Russia proved productive. A recent report by JP Morgan says a new plan is being hatched to punish Russia, but if Russia, whose economic situation is much better at the moment, cuts its oil production by half a million barrels the price of oil will jump to $ 380 spelling a disaster.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022