LONDON – Former finance minister Ishaq Dar Friday claimed that a handfulof speculators were responsible for the fluctuation and
rise of the US dollar against the Pakistani rupee and the state must takeaction against such elements. “The state has to deal with the speculators,they cannot hold Pakistan’s economy hostage. The govt has to use its mightto push back, there are a handful of people involved in speculation fortheir personal gains. This is not the real value; it is all speculation.Real effective exchange rate, that is what you should trade on,” Dar saidwhen asked about the current state of the Rupee and the electricity billsbomb on the masses during a media talk in London on Friday.
Responding to a question about the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PMD)government’s performance and economy under him as finance minister, Darsaid there was “no quick fix to any problem”. He said that when thePakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took the reins of Pakistan under NawazSharif’s leadership in 2013, it delivered till 2018.
“We had the best stock market. The inflation was low and Pakistan wasperforming well at all levels. We had become a regional power and animportant international player. We were about to enter into G20 and hadbecome the 24th biggest economy in the world but that journey was stopped.An adventure was launched and made [Pakistan] the world’s 47th economy,”Dar said.
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He added that the destruction caused over these years couldn’t be reveredin a year as it needs the revival of those policies and time to reverse thedamage. The ex-finance czar said he took over Pakistan’s economy afterformer prime minister Imran Khan’s ouster when the country was on thebrink of a default due to the policies of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf(PTI) government.
