As PM Imran Khan dissolved all assemblies and urged the nation to gear up for early elections, former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry took to Twitter to share a video clip of Aqeel Karim Dhedhi breaking down the loans PTI took in its 3 years.
Aqeel Karim Dhedhi is a Pakistani business tycoon and stock trader who is the founder and chairman of the AKD Group. While speaking on “Hard Talk with Moeed Pirzada”, Mr. Dhedhi claimed that PTI took a loan of only $ 5 billion.
Talking about PTI’s economic policies, Mr. Dhedhi said that in 3 years PTI took a total loan of $ 46 billion. However, the PTI government made a repayment of $ 27 billion. After the repayment, an amount of $ 19 billion was left from which the government paid around $ 6.5 billion in interest.
Read more: PTI government created 5.5 million jobs in three years
Furthermore, with the leftover amount of around $ 12.5 billion, the government created reserves of $ 7.5 billion. As a result, $ 5 billion is left, meaning that the PTI government took a total debt of $ 5 billion.
“These are the actual figures,” the Chairman of AKD Group said.
Tweeting the video, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain called it, “Facts on debt.”
Facts on Debt pic.twitter.com/i2YKwp73qq
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) April 4, 2022
Accusations against PTI
Important to note, the Opposition and critics resolutely maintain that the PTI government led Pakistan to an economic crisis. According to them, during the PTI era, the country faced high levels of inflation, rupee depreciation, shortage of commodities, etc.
PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif, in a recent interview, said Pakistan is not economically independent. He said the country is surviving on loans from foreign agencies. He added that Prime Minster used to claim that he would “commit suicide” rather than go to the IMF, then why did not he do so when his government asked the IMF to bail them out of the financial crisis.
On the other hand, the PTI government maintains that Pakistan progressed economically during its time. According to reports, Pakistan witnessed a 26 percent increase in exports during the PTI rule. In February 2022, exports reached a value of $100 million per day.
In the last fiscal year, Pakistan exported approximately $25 billion worth of goods and around $6 billion worth of services taking the total export value to around $31 billion.
Read more: PTI government records 26 percent increase in exports in four years