‘Cut expenditure to reduce debt burden’

LAHORE

Government, opposition and all other stakeholders concerned should jointly make a comprehensive plan for debt and apprise the public of factual position of public debt, evolve future course of action to reduce debt burden, increase exports and reduce government expenditure.

These views were expressed by the experts in Jang Economic Session on ‘how to reduce debt burden’, here on Friday. The panellists were Dr Ehsan Malik, Khalid Saleem, Hussain Ahmed Sherazi, Huzima Bokhari, and Abdul Basit Khan while hosted by Sikindar Lodhi.

Dr Ehsan Malik said that loans taken by the successive government had burdened the future generations while more loans for debt service was injustice with nation. He said reduction in the government unproductive expenses was crucial to reduce the debt burden from economy. He lamented building foreign exchange reserves on debt and stressed for increasing human productivity to increase foreign exchange while debt will not reduce through printing money. He suggested discouraging the black money.

Khalid Saleem said that lack of national interest policy was the major issue of the country; so every government kept on taking new loans to retire successive governments loans which put pressure on economy. He said foreign debt to GSP ratio was above 65 percent which was dangerous. He suggested economic national action plan to save the future generation from foreign debt. He said debt service burden would continue in next two to three years to pay the euro bond returns; so there was a need to take special steps to increase revenue generation to control economic issues.

Hussain Ahmed Sherazi said that debt could be reduced by creating balance in income and expenditures. He said debts were considered income in Pakistan while major portion of it was spent on retiring previous loans, defence, and development projects; so the new loans required to run the affairs of the government. He suggested increase the GDP from 14 to 15 percent to end the debt and bring the agriculture sector in the tax net to increase the national income and reduce the debt burden. He said 61 percent of elected representatives did not pay taxes while the government representatives should make themselves example by paying taxes. He called for reducing withholding tax which burdened the poor.

Huzima Bokhari said that government should reduce the unnecessary expenditures and irrelevant ministries. She said 60 to 80 percent economy was undocumented which was hidden from GDP while poor data regime, tax recovery were complicating the economy. She said the government had failed to implement equal and just taxation system while lower income group adversely affected with the withholding tax regime.

Abdul Basit Khan said the political instability was one of the major reasons of economic crisis. He said the political governments should take national interest policies and ignore the feudalism policies.