Caretaker PM expresses confidence about emerging out of economic quagmire

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister (PM) Anwaarul Haq Kakar on Saturday expressed confidence that Pakistan will come out of the economic quagmire, ARY News reported.

The caretaker prime minister passed these remarks during an interactive session with a delegation of students from Harvard, who are in Pakistan on a visit. The students had also interacted with Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir yesterday.

Responding to a question about Pakistan’s dependence on external financial institutions, PM Anwaarul Haq Kakar said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was “neither a friend nor a foe”.

The prime minister pointed out that that in Pakistan, about nine percent population was contributing towards GDP with their taxes.

“How to bring the undocumented economy, people in the tax net and how to invest in the human resources would be broadly focused during the short period of the caretaker government”, he said.

The caretaker PM also said Pakistan was gifted with the natural resources, which included not just mineral goods but also talented people, and expressed confidence that “these stars” would guide the country.

He said the government was focusing to produce the high-tech educated and skilled human resource and cited a couplet of Allama Iqbal in which he had hinted the importance of human resource through individual and collective efforts.

Pakistan’s role in USSR-Afghan war

Replying to a query, the prime minister elaborated the role played by Pakistan during the former USSR and Afghanistan war and the subsequent events in the region.

He said Pakistan had contributed hugely towards the global peace and economy. “They had faced a lot of challenges in the past as the two powers of the world; the US and Russia, had been in its milieu which had implications|, he added.

PM Kakar, explaining a viewpoint, said that priorities by different governments in Pakistan kept on changing, but they did have visions and tried to visualize those visions. He also deliberated upon the history and creation of Pakistan.

Democracy

The prime minister, to another question, said that democracy gave strength to parliament and mentioned that in Pakistan, in the last fifteen years, three successive democratic governments had completed their tenures.

“Democracy is a process. We are committed to the performance and participatory process of democracy,” he said.

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The prime minister further said that social order can “never ever be compromised for the rule of law” as he emphasised striking a balance between the two.

PM Kakar said the “incomplete completion of tenure of any government is not at all undemocratic”. “I have not seen any act in the past 15 years where the case has been otherwise,” he asserted, stressing that “democracy is a process not an event”.

Relationship with US

The caretaker PM expressed Pakistan’s determination to establish a collaborative partnership with the US.

He said if any nation or society has to remain connected with the global unfolding particularly in the realm of technology and research and development, how it could divorce itself from North America.

Acknowledging the strides made by America in the field of knowledge and skills over the last two hundred years, he said the rest of the world needs to benefit and learn from it. He said Pakistan is very positive towards its relationship with the US and there is a history of it.

He said there are convergences and divergences in this relationship. He said one area where we are commonality of views is climate change which is becoming an existential threat to every state.

The Prime Minister said Pakistan sees the US as a big power but at the same time wants to see it to turn itself into a great power. “We want to partner that journey of greatness along with the US,” he added.