Mini-budget last ditch effort to save the corrupt system: PPP

Islamabad: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Thursday said the mini-budget presented by the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government can best be termed as a last ditch attempt by the Right Wing to save the exploitative and corrupt to the core economic system which had been dead long since. PPP leader Taj Haider said the mini-budget fails to address the basic problem of fiscal deficit, which is directly responsible for fueling extra high inflation, stagnating public sector development and social sectors and pushing ever growing numbers of our people into the abyss of poverty and hunger. The fresh proposals pamper tax-evaders and further divert national wealth created by the ever toiling many to the pockets of the ever ungrateful few. No wonder that Big Business has welcomed the new proposals whole-heartedly. But the time is not far when they would again be demanding from the State to “do more” in the “national interest”. Taj Haider said that the hollow promise of achieving high growth rates in 2023 and ‘to provide trickle down benefits to the people was a shameful deception. “Further enlarging the income gap between the rich and the poor can only spell total economic disaster. Economic growth is directly dependent on equality and raising the buying power of the marginalized. Economic growth cannot be based on higher profits and greater tax evasion. It has to be based on higher wages and full employment. Concentration of wealth in a few hands has to be replaced by circulation of wealth among the many. Subsidies given to the rich in the hope of indirectly benefiting the poor have to be directly provided to the poor to increase production of essential items and to promote circulation of wealth,” said in a statement. The only silver lining in the present situation is that the Right Wing proponents of the exploitative system are at each other’s throats and are blaming each other for its demise. The corpse is stinking. The sooner it is buried the better, he added.