Loud Thinking

Posts Tagged ‘ishaq’

Daily The News reports today that “Conditions of IMF met for $7.3 billion bailout package”.

Link:- http://images.thenews.com.pk/26-08-2013/ethenews/t-25004.htm

Mr. Ishaq Dar kindly clarify the following 7 questions relating to the facts regarding the Pakistan’s economy..!

1. Firstly, you stated on the floor of the house that we are taking fresh loan from the IMF to repay the old IMF loan.

2. You also stated on the same floor of the house that the loan amount from the IMF will be $5.5billion at an interest rate of 3%, which was exorbitantly high interest rate considering that IMF had already decided in December, 2012 to give loan on ZERO interest rate to poor countries. Kimdly inform which country can be poorer than Pakistan, who was unable to even repay its loans?

Your kind attention is invited towards the following news item titled “IMF extends zero interest rates on poorer country loans” published by the daily “Pakistan Today” on 23 December, 2012 detailed news available at the link :- http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/12/23/news/profit/imf-extends-zero-interest-rates-on-poorer-country-loans-2/

3. Secondly, you pledged on the floor of the house that loan terms will not be against the interests of Pakistan.

4. Then you increased the electricity tariff for the Pakistani industrial users by a whopping 70% to fulfil the IMF conditions for the loan.

5. Don’t you think that this power tariff increase will destroy our economy and create unemployment, as the increased cost of production of each and every item, under the use of the poorest of the poor, will make the goods highly expensive and the poor will become even more poorer? In fact, your this step will ever be remembered in the history of Pakistan, as the one and only top most action which murdered the economy of the country and pushed additional millions of people below the poverty line.

I am also afraid that your this single step may not forever seal, the fate of PMLN’s chances in coming to the power again, as and when the negative impact is gradually filtered down the line.

If I were the PM Pakistan, would never have approved this fatal decision of increasing power rates of the already limping industry of Pakistan.

5. Why you earlier mislead the nation that $5.5billion is being taken for the repayment of the old loan and now the cat is out of the bag and the loan amount is actually $7.3billion?

6. The above fact at #5 also proves that you also wrongly said that this loan was being taken to repay the old loan.

7. Hope you remember the maiden speech of the PM in the Parliament house wherein, the PM promised with the nation on the floor of the house, that nothing will be hidden from the nation. Then why you hid the fact that this loan is being taken NOT just for the repayment of the loan; and why you hid the fact that this loan amount was actually $7.3billion and not $5.5billion?

An early reply shall be highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad

Lahore.

Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE

Attention Mr. Ishaq Dar, the IMF and the World Bank.

we paid $37.2 billion as debt-servicing alone in the last eight years. This is many times more than the principal amount that we borrowed during this period.

An Eye Opener by Mr. Naeem Sadiq

Dear Bank

Naeem Sadiq
TheNews
Friday, July 12, 2013

Many thanks for the $5.3 billion loan. One small step for a bank, a giant leap for a chronic borrower. I can proudly claim that my debt, steadily rising every year, has now reached $66.17 billion. This would mean that every member of my family must cough out $366 to repay this loan. This can only happen if we all stop eating, drinking – in fact living – for the next 10 months. Is that what they also call collective suicide? I made sure not to consult my unenthusiastic family, on whose behalf these loans were taken. They never seem to agree with my lifesaving – or should I say death-delaying? – initiatives. You too must be equally ecstatic. After all you end up gaining the most. You will retain most of this amount as repayment of the earlier loan, while my unflinching yearly debt-servicing will keep you charmed for a long time to come.

You had raised a number of questions before you approved the loans. Why is it that despite such massive borrowing, my family shows no signs of getting any better? Why are 50 percent of the family members illiterate and 60 percent below poverty level? Why are half the children out of school? Why is there no electricity half the time? Why does no one in the family have access to clean tap water?

You also wanted to know the reasons for the striking disparity in the lifestyle of some other members of our family. They move about with armed guards in obscenely large vehicles (often smuggled), live in luxury homes, have properties and cash stacked in foreign lands and drink corporate soda or water only from those neat-looking plastic bottles. It is only this segment of the family that is forever pushing for more loans. They are the ones who justify the bank’s slogan of ‘poverty alleviation’ – since this is the only group whose poverty gets truly alleviated.

My sixth sense tells me that you already know the answers to all these questions. You were merely going through the motions, filling forms, giving an impression of officious formality and appropriateness. The fact that I earn little, waste a lot and pilfer the most, makes me an ideal customer for the sort of business you are in. I have learnt to plead my case by closely studying beggars who flock the streets of Karachi during the holy month of Ramazan every year. I use exactly the same techniques with only three minor variations – dress, language and location.

Now, some bad news for you. My entire family, except those very few who gained the most from your loans, got together last night to say that they would no longer tolerate being pushed into this bottomless cesspool.

When I gave them your message that they needed to tighten their belts, they said they were too poor and did not have any belts to tighten. They said they were fed up of the loans taken on their name – the loans that make the elite of the family get richer and have still more fun. The mounting loans have made them poorer than before and taken away the last shreds of dignity that covered their half-naked bodies. Getting crumbs like 0.8 percent for health and 1.8 percent for education made them still more unhealthy, and yet more uneducated.

In simple words, my family has decided not just to stop seeking any further loans but to also stop any further debt-servicing. An unemployed maths teacher in my family spent some time to calculate that we paid $37.2 billion as debt-servicing alone in the last eight years. This is many times more than the principal amount that we borrowed during this period.

We are absolutely sure that there is no law that can force us to close our schools, starve our children, privatise our resources and abandon our welfare, simply because our selfish elders borrowed huge sums on behalf of those who cannot even spell the word ‘loan’ or have ever seen a bank from the inside.

Having paid off the principal amount several times over, we have a good reason to ask for total debt cancellation and an immediate freeze on any further debt-servicing. Do you realise that discovering a new mode of dying – by getting trampled while struggling to receive free food donations – speaks volumes about the poverty that your loans have been able to alleviate?

Sincerely,

Issac.dare@gmail.com

naeem sadiq
twitter : @saynotoweapons
———————————————————————
How the state promotes crime and militancy. Look at the yearly average for prohibited bore licenses (PB) and non prohibited bore licenses (NPB) issued in last 10 years to the rich and powerful, to friends and relatives and to party men and criminals.

Yearly average of PB licenses, from 2003 to 2007………361
Yearly average of PB licenses, from 2008 to 2012 ………13895

Yearly average of NPB licenses, from 2003 to 2007………15261
Yearly average of NPB licenses, from 2008 to 2012 ………240494

Ref: official info obtained by using FOI and SC Suo moto case 16/2011

Dear Mr. Ishaq Dar,

Your kind attention is invited towards the following news item titled “IMF extends zero interest rates on poorer country loans” published by the daily “Pakistan Today” on 23 December, 2012 detailed news available at the link :- http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/12/23/news/profit/imf-extends-zero-interest-rates-on-poorer-country-loans-2/

In this regard, as per my many earlier submissions to the PM and the entire nation, I am fully convinced, without an iota of doubt that it is sheer disaster recipe for the Pakistan’s economy, to seek loan (that too on an exorbitantly high rate of 3%) from IMF, to repay their old loan. Moreover, your argument that this was the only option to avoid a default, also do not hold water, as firstly, I have explained not one but many viable options in my earlier communications and secondly, default is better than the destruction of the very foundations of the nation’s economy. Hope you know very well that in the recent past, many countries have bravely negotiated with the international lending agencies and succeeded in getting reduction of up to 60% of their loans.

However, in Pakistan’s case our loan amount is increasing with an unbelievable speed. It was recently reported that when PPP government took over in 2008, our debt liability was $40 billions and now it has increased to much more than $60 billion.

The nations fails to understand that why you remained silent as PMLN’s financial expert and also as a senator, during the PPP tenure, when it crossed the LEGAL and constitutional limit of 6% debt to GDP ratio. This was such a grave violation of the law that had PMLN taken up this issue with the Supreme Court, the PPP government would have been immediately dismissed.

So how can you now absolve yourself from this financial mess, by just saying that you took over the government with nation’s economy in very bad shape?

Also, how can the history exonerate the PMLN in general and Mr. Ishaq Dar in particular, for not playing a pro Pakistan role when the PPP government was playing havoc, with the country’s economy?

As such, Mr. Ishaq Dar, there is only one way of atonement of our past acts of commissions and omissions, by not to further burden the nation’s economy with extremely and unprecedentedly expensive loans of IMF, lest the future generations may not have to say that “لمحوں نے خطا کی تھی صد یوں نے سزا پائ”

Kindly still there is time to explore other options to avoid IMF loan. Nothing is impossible. Where there is a will there is a way.

With best regards,

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad
0321-9402157
Lahore.

Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE