KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, Mian Zahid Hussain has express concern over the reports of a two to three percent increase in interest rate by State Bank under the demands of IMF are disturbing.

This decision will increase the cost of doing business, bank defaults will increase, new investments will stop, and many businesses will close down which will increase unemployment, but the fall of the rupee will be somewhat reduced, he said. Mian Zahid Hussain said that the interest rate is already seventeen percent which has increased the burden on the business community and the further increase will be disastrous for them.

He said that the public and the business community are already worried about the increase in the prices of oil, gas, electricity, and other commodities and they are not able to bear the burden anymore.

The state of the country has become such that the higher authorities are calling loans and extensions in the repayment period of a loan as a piece of great news.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023