PTI to quit assemblies after Eid if demands not met

 

ISLAMABAD: The core committee of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) here on Wednesday formally decided to quit the National Assembly (NA) and the provincial assemblies after Eidul Fitr, if scientific voter verification was not held for the four NA constituencies in a month.
Under Chairman Imran Khan, the forum met here and discussed the future political course in the backdrop of Dr Tahirul Qadri’s proposed drive against the government. The core committee was sharply divided on siding with the “guest” from Canada and coming out of the National and KP assemblies, it was learnt.

Quite surprisingly, the release issued by the PTI Media Cell missed out to mention any political aspect of the meeting. However, sources told The News that difference of opinion was clearly witnessed during the deliberations.

It has been learnt that Dr Qadri was unhappy with the PTI leadership for its cold-shouldered response to his homecoming. And this was reflected in his statement before the media on Monday night that he was grateful to some leaders of the PTI for their support to him. He skipped the name of anyone, even Imran Khan.

“The PTI is reluctant to publicly announce support to Dr Qadri, as it may entail a massive fallout in case he decided to go back to Canada, as he had done earlier,” a senior PTI leader maintained. Another reason was the public perception that Dr Qadri enjoyed the backing of some invisible forces in his anti-government campaign.

He pointed out it was for these reasons that the core committee and even Imran had declared in categorical terms that his party was not joining any grand alliance – a reference to Dr Qadri and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat.

“The democratic credentials of PTI can suffer immensely in case it went public in support of Pakistan Awami Tehreek of Dr Qadri,” he noted. Sources revealed that Imran met Dr Qadri and PML leaders in London recently. They claimed during the meeting Imran indicated his willingness to support Dr Qadri. However, strong resistance within the PTI about openly supporting him forced Imran to hold back his supporters from joining the PAT workers on the streets welcoming their leader’s return from Canada.

A founding member and a former central vice president of PTI, Akbar S Babar, told this correspondent that the test of the PTI’s present ambivalent policy towards PAT will come when Dr Qadri announces his final showdown at the D-Chowk in Islamabad. He felt that the PTI has found itself in political no-man’s land. Instead of focusing on delivering in the KP and making an impact in the NA, the PTI, he alleged, had wasted precious time to consolidate the electoral gains made in 2013 elections.

Babar, who remained the lead PTI opinion maker according to Imran until developing differences on alleged internal corruption and lack of accountability in late 2011, said that if Imran thought that by joining hands with Dr Qadri and remnants of the PML-Q he would be the next natural choice to run the country, he might have another rude awakening.

Babar predicted that Imran’s next biggest political rival would be Dr Qadri whose claim to the lion’s share in the next political set-up based on sacrifices to remove the present government would be challenged by the PTI.

Meanwhile, PTI’s information secretary has pointed out that Imran has demanded the prime minister to announce Rs6 billion aid for the IDPs as soon as possible. This is essential if a human catastrophe is to be avoided, says a PTI release.

The PTI core committee expressed grave concern over the human misery of the IDPs from the NWA. She said Imran had informed the core committee that he had asked the PTI Razakars to mobilise and help the Imran Khan Foundation in their massive relief effort already underway.

Economic growth has increased but most targets couldn’t be met

 

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance Senator Ishaq Dar has conceded that the government has missed major economic targets of GDP growth, revenue, investment and inflation in the outgoing year.
The GDP growth remained at 4.14 percent against a target of 4.4 percent but in the last six years, this is the first time that Pakistan registered over 4 percent growth against the revised target of 3.7 percent, taking the per capita income up to $1,386 in 2013-14 from the revised target of $1,369 in 2012-13. Tax collection remained at 16 percent and inflation increased by 8.5 percent and unemployment registered an increase of 6.2 percent.

Announcing the results of the Economic Survey at a news conference, the finance minister said in the first year of its rule, the government spent its time in fire fighting and in the second financial year, which is 2014-15, the masses will be witnessing dividends of the prudent economic policies.

The minister said that he himself fixed the aggressive economic targets for 2013-14 so that the government could not remain complacent and because of hard work and good economic governance, the government had performed well in terms of achieving the GDP growth of 4.14 percent.

He vowed to increase the GDP growth by 1 percent every year and said that the size of the GDP had swelled close to $300 billion. The minister said the unemployment rate had increased to 6.2 percent from 5.9 percent from 2009-10. He stated that the impact of the war against terrorism remained at $102 billion and 50 percent of the population was living below the poverty line of $2 a day income.

“The vulnerable segments of the society will be taken care of and it was I who first proposed the Benazir Income Support Programme as target subsidy to provide solace to the poorest of the poor. The last government in five years time increased the BISP allocation from Rs34 billion to just Rs40 billion,” he said.

However, the government has increased the allocation under the Benazir Income Support Programme to Rs75 billion in the current financial year, which will be increased further in the next budgetary year. Next year, the government will provide financial help to 4,700,000 poor people.

Coming to the GDP growth analysis, the minister said that the overall industrial growth remained at 5.84 percent in the first nine months against 1.37 percent in the same period of the last year. He said the Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) sector grew by 5.31 percent as against 4.1 percent last year.

The construction sector grew tremendously by 11.3 percent in the first nine months of the current financial year as against the negative growth of 1.7 percent in 2012-13.

Electricity generation and gas distribution sector grew by 3.72 percent against the negative growth of 16.3 percent in the last financial year. “This has really helped increase growth of the industrial sector.” He said growth in small and household sector stayed at 8.4 percent against the growth of 8.3 percent in the same sector last year.

However, the Economic Survey said during 2013-14, energy consumption was 40,185 million TOEs compared to 40,026 million TOEs in 2012-13 showing a growth of 0.4 percent. Now the industrial growth could be questioned with an increase in electricity consumption by 0.4 percent.

However, the minister admitted the agriculture sector growth remained very low at just 2.1 percent against 2.88 percent last year. However, in the next budgetary year, the government will come up with alluring incentives to increase the growth in agriculture sector.

Dar said the growth in important crops remained at 3.7 percent as against 1.2 percent last year. Other crops that included oil seeds and pulses showed negative growth at 3.5 percent as against 6.1 percent last year. He said that the country also witnessed a reduction in growth as cotton production remained at 12.77 million bales against 13.03 million bales.

The minister said that for agriculture sector, the government allocated Rs380 billion for the current year against Rs315 billion last year. Next time the government will increase the credit lines for the agriculture sector. He also mentioned that fertilisers also remained short and the government had somehow managed to provide the imported fertilisers at Rs1,786 per bag plus Rs25 of dealers margin. “We brought down the prices of fertiliser from Rs1,952 per bag to Rs1,786,” he said.

Mentioning the services sector, the minister said that this sector failed to perform up to the expectations as it grew by 4.3 percent against the growth of 4.9 percent in the last financial year.

In transport, storage and communication sector, the growth remained at 3 percent against 2.9 percent, in wholesale and retail trade 5.2 percent against 3.4 percent, finance and insurance 5.2 percent against 9 percent, housing services remained at 4 percent against 4 percent last year and growth in general government services tumbled by 2.2 percent against 11.3 percent and in other private sector, the growth stayed at 5.8 percent as against 5.2 percent.

About inflation, the minister said that during the July-April period, it remained at 8.8 percent against 7.75 percent last fiscal. However, till May this year, inflation remained at 8.6 percent as against 7.5 percent. About the core inflation which he termed very important saying it remained at 8.2 percent against 9.7 percent in 11 months of the outgoing fiscal.

The minister also said that government borrowing had reduced and the monetary policy had improved. Highlighting the exports of the country, he said that exports had increased by 4.24 percent to $21 billion in the last 10 months against $20.1 billion in thesame period last year and because of the GSP Plus, the textile sector grew by 7 percent and raw cotton export 42 percent. However, it would have been better if the value addition had been added and finished products exported instead of exporting raw cotton. However, the imports, the minister said, had increased by 1.2 percent to $37.1 billion from $36.7 billion in 2012-13. Dar mentioned the reason for the increase in exports saying that plants and machinery had been imported on a large scale, which is in a way a positive sign for growth in economy.

Investment to GDP has reduced to 13.99 percent from 14.57 percent of GDP last year. Fixed investment has also tumbled to 12.39 percent of the GDP against 12.79 percent. Out of this, the private investment remained at 8.94 percent against 9.64 percent of GDP. Dar said that total investment was recorded at Rs3,276 billion in 2012-13, which increased to Rs3,554 billion in 2013-14. The minister said that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) had reached $2.979 billion that also included the $2 billion Euro Bond. However, in the last year in the same period it stood at $1.277 billion.

Talking about the foreign exchange reserves, the minister said that reserves had reached $13.66 billion against $11.4 billion. He mentioned in February last year, the reserves stood at just $7.5 billion out of which the central bank reserves were at $2.7 billion. Now the situation had completely changed as right now the State Bank of Pakistan reserves had reached $8.8 billion whereas the reserves of commercial banks were stagnant at $4.8 billion.The growth in remittances has slightly reduced to $12.894 billion from $13.921 billion.

PM, COAS met frequently in four months

ISLAMABAD: No Chief of Army Staff (COAS) has held so many meetings with a prime minister in such a short span of time as General Raheel Sharif has had with Nawaz Sharif in just four months but still meeting of the minds on Pervez Musharraf’s fate is missing.

This is indicative of the fact that though the two Sharifs have met for a number of times, they have not held even a slight discussion on the former general’s future.Both apparently consciously avoided touching this subject for their own reasons and restricted their deliberations to only burning national issues specifically security matters, terrorism and peace talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

All together, the Sharif duo has met for some half a dozen times since the new army chief took command of the Pakistan Army in November last. Since then, Nawaz Sharif has been abroad on official tours for nearly a month, which means that the prime minister and the COAS have held meetings at least twice a month which is a very good frequency keeping in view the record of the sessions between such position holders in the past.

This regularity, generally speaking, signals the impression that all’s well as the two top guns sit together and positively work to thrash out issues, sharing views on almost all matters that have the potential of marring their relations.

They met in December, January, February and March, and are expected to be under one roof once again four days later on April 19 at the Pakistan Military Academy Kakul passing out parade where the prime minister will be the chief guest. They may hold a session even before that.

Almost every time, the two chiefs met, senior cabinet ministers and other top officials harped on the theme that the government and the army are on the same page on all critical issues. This was always taken as a positive development in a country where they have usually been holding conflicting stands.

Intensive interactions no doubt help remove misgivings and misunderstandings apart from helping formulation of consensus policies. But although the two sides have been frequently meeting, they have not been on the same wavelength and have not developed the desired rapport on the Musharraf saga otherwise General Raheel Sharif would not have deemed it necessary to issue his famous public statement, prompting some elements, who dream of rocking the relations between the two for their ulterior motives, to paint it as a storm.

All the soldiers’ concerns that the general wanted to address through his public remarks could have been discussed with the prime minister and an easy way-out would have been conveniently found to remove them.

Interpretations of the chief’s comment are galore. One most mooted and plausible puts it as a reaction to some statements of two Khawajas, Defence Minister M Asif and Railways Minister Saad Rafique.

Instead of going public, the best option was to point out to the prime minister their “irresponsible attack” that may have demoralised the soldiers fighting on different fronts, and get it stopped

General Raheel Sharif has just started his three-year tenure as the army chief. Never before has any of his predecessors issued such a statement after just first four months of assuming office. Regardless of what other highly placed government functionaries have stated, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan turned out to be more forthcoming, honest and saner when he admitted the row, though temporarily, which he hoped would go not without much difficulty.

The COAS has made it a point to take some other generals including Ashfaque Nadeem, the Chief of General Staff, and Zaheerul Islam, the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in some high-level meetings with the prime minister, who was assisted by his close aides.

Apart from the elaborate contacts the prime minister has had with the army chief, Chaudhry Nisar too has been having comprehensive interactions with the top men of the security establishment including the ISI chief for consultations on the peace talks and other matters.

At no stage has the government gone solo on the question of the dialogue process. It constituted the first committee after talking to the army. Again, it consulted the force when it formed the second body. Thus, there has been no breaking of communication on this critical issue. But still some people, who pose themselves to be speaking on behalf of the security establishment, have been asserting that the army is annoyed over the release of some Taliban prisoners.

However, even if the government has wanted to free any such inmates, it can’t do so because all of them are in the custody of the army. Rebutting this vicious campaign, the interior minister has to say that the 19 Taliban prisoners were set free after consultations with the army.

If Nawaz Sharif indeed needs to rein in some of his ministers from unnecessary haranguing against Musharraf that is taken as criticism on the army, Raheel Sharif is required to hold back those elements in different agencies. Both have equal bigger responsibility to nip the evil of fueling confrontation in the bud. Everyone is well aware that Pakistan’s plate is full of paramount problems and it can’t brook any adventurism.