ISLAMABAD (APP): The Islamabad Chamber of Small Traders (ICST) Sunday said the Brexit was the beginning of the end of globalization as it had failed to achieve the cited objectives.
"Free market economy increased the concentration of wealth, augmented the number of billionaires and pushed million below the poverty line to live in abject poverty," Pattron ICST Shahid Rasheed Butt said in a statement.
He opined that now for the first time a major economy had said that it would be better off doing things by itself, and making its own decisions which had shaken the world.
Globalization, he said, had failed to eradicate extreme poverty, rather it had worsened the problem by throwing world into acute crisis. The economic globalization could not increase integration and interdependence of national, regional and local economies across the world through cross-border movement of goods, services, technologies and capital, he added.
It also failed to minimize conflicts, ensure sustainable peace, and improve quality of goods, bridge gas between rich and poor and saving people from colonization, he said.
Shahid Rasheed Butt said globalization had increased number of billionaires in all the countries while hurting poor, environment and natural resources. "Some 20 per cent rich now control 86 per cent of the world's resources."
The veteran business leader said free market had triggered exploitation of labour, increased incidence of child labour, human trafficking, tax frauds, money laundering and social inequality.
Many countries damaged their economies due to trade agreements while the world saw a number of global economic crises hurting every human on earth, he added.
Pakistan, he said, should frame its own policies in the greater national interest and start taking critical economic decisions by itself so that it could develop and masses could be soothed through just distribution of wealth.