Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Imran Khan

Islamabad, June 10: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan is slated to address the country on Monday morning, in the midst of a financial crisis which the nation continues to struggle.

According to ANI news reports, Khan is scheduled to attend the gathering today morning which will be aired at around 9 am (local time).

The prime minister would discuss the issues related to the upcoming federal budget and the economic condition of the nation, as per Pakistani media reports.

Pakistan’s ruling PTI government is slated to release its very-first budget on June 11 for the fiscal year of 2019-20, during a National Assembly conference. The budget for the fiscal year will be presented by Khan’s advisor on economic affairs, revenue, and finance Dr. Hafeez Shaikh.

Khan has on last Wednesday said the country’s military, in a rare move, agreed to cut short its substantial budget for one year in order to help ease the nation’s “critical financial situation”.

Islamabad has struck a deal in principle with the IMF(International Monetary Fund) for financial assistance of $6 billion bailout package but Pakistan was expected to put the measures in place to rein in ballooning current and fiscal account deficits in order to get access to the funds.

On late Tuesday, Khan tweeted he praised the army’s “unprecedented voluntary initiative of stringent cuts in their defense expenditures” for coming financial year because of nation’s critical financial situation.

The IMF has stated the preliminary budget deficit needs to be trimmed by the equivalent of $5 billion, however, the previous civilian rulers have rarely dared to trim the defence budget in fear of escalating tensions with the army.

Under this developed scheme, the government would be required to hand over half its budget to the provinces, and thus the remainders would mostly be eaten up by a vast budget of the military and debt servicing.

 

Also read: Pakistani military ‘voluntarily’ cuts defence budget amidst financial crisis, PM Khan says

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *