Geo436 ISLAMABAD: Former finance minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Ishaq Dar on Friday asked the government to utilise local resources for the reconstruction of flood-hit areas.
Opening a debate on the prevailing state of economy and inflation in the country, he said the government should cut non-development expenditures and divert resources towards the poor people, particularly affected by the recent floods.
Coming to inflation, Dar said the government needed to play a proactive role to check inflation and provide relief to the masses. He said it was a total failure of the government that the sugar price had gone up to Rs.95 per kilogram. He rejected the mechanism of the market economy, saying it could not be applied to Pakistan at this stage.
The PML-N senator blamed sugar mafia for the rising price of the commodity, saying it caused delay in import of raw sugar. He said the government's lack of concentration on the issue encouraged the sugar mafia to rob people of their hard earned money.
He said the government got into problems through over-borrowing, over-spending and printing excessive currency notes. He lamented that the supplementary grants in the previous year were 20 percent of the total layout of the budget.
He further said the government could not meet the revenue collection this year. He asked politicians to rise to the challenge and take measures to provide relief to the poor masses.
Senator Prof Khalid Soomro, on a point of order, alleged that Ministry of Religious Affairs officials were involved in corruption in hiring accommodations for hajis in Makkah. He said the officials minted 1,000 riyals for each haji in hiring accommodation.
Senator Haji Adeel asked the government to explain whether the reported letter written by a Saudi prince to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was genuine. However, he got no answer.
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