Inflation widening gap between rich and poor

F.P. Report

KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain has said that the inflation was widening the gulf between the rich and the poor.

He said that the middle class has become poor, and the people were suffering under the burden of inflation, which was causing economic and social problems.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the business community cannot invest or plan for the future due to inflation, so this problem should be solved immediately. Inflation was a significant cause of economic instability, which was an obstacle to domestic and foreign investment, he maintained.

He said that unemployment will continue to rise until there is no investment in the country, and the solution to unemployment is to promote technical education. The business leader said that there was a need to create a strategy to end inflation, in which the first priority should be given to speculation and hoarding while administrative measures should be taken.

Targeted subsidies for poor people should be increased because people can no longer feed themselves. SIFC is an excellent arrangement for prioritising foreign investment under which investors will be provided with a better environment so that they can provide employment to the people and also transfer technology, he observed.

While other measures are necessary to save the country’s economy and attract domestic and foreign investors, it is also necessary to improve the broken energy sector.

The current price of energy and supply disruptions was enough to scare away any investor.

Mian Zahid further said that the capacity payments of the power sector, which were 185 billion rupees in 2013, will reach 1600 billion rupees in 2023, while by 2031 these payments will reach 3700 rupees, which will be 75 percent of the electricity bills.

The vast majority of the country’s population will not be able to buy electricity due to increasing capacity payments.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that due to corruption and incompetence, the power sector has been ruined to such an extent that success in this regard is now the only option; otherwise, it will destroy the economy. (INP)