Pakistan Not Able To Increase Defence Budget Due To Previous Govts’ Debts

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that Pakistan has not been able to increase the defence budget in the same way that the neighbouring countries have increased it, mainly due to the repayment of loans.

During the National Assembly session in Islamabad, he said that the current government is paying more than Rs 2,000 billion in loans adding that these loans were taken by the people sitting in the opposition seats.

He termed the period from 2008 to 2018 as the darkest period and said that the international debt of Pakistan in that period was Rs 6,000 billion.

“We built the fifth largest army in the world, we built navy bases and motorways,” he said.

He said that from the tenure of PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari to the PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, the country’s debt was Rs 26,000 billion.

Fawad Chaudhry said that as a result of the decision of the previous governments, the present government has to pay interest on loans of Rs 2,000 every year, which was imposed on the country by the opposition parties when they were in power.

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He said that the previous government had set up a coal plant in Sahiwal to generate electricity while there was no coal in Sahiwal, so it was decided that coal would be transported from Karachi to Sahiwal by train there, also there is a lack of plannings in their every project.

He said that when Asif Ali Zardari was president in 2008 and during Nawaz Sharif’s government, Rs 190 billion had to be paid to power plants. When Prime Minister Imran Khan came to power, it became clear that the amount of mandatory payment 900 billion.

Fawad Chaudhry said that in the election year of 2023, the power plants will have to pay Rs. 1500 billion in the form of compulsory payment.

He said that the capacity to supply electricity from power plants to consumers is 24,000 MW.

Fawad Chaudhry said that more than Rs. 700 billion was sent to the Sindh government in this budget. In total, Rs. 16 to 18 hundred billion has been spent this year.

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