Expect no short-term miracles, says Asad Umar

Pakistan’s incoming finance minister, Asad Umar, speaks to reporters after a press conference at the party’s central office in Islamabad. (AN photo)
Updated 08 August 2018
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Expect no short-term miracles, says Asad Umar

  • Loan from IMF or friendly countries to be decided in September, says PTI’s Asad Umar
  • China reportedly loaned $2 billion to Pakistan to help revive the economy

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s finance minister-in-waiting Asad Umar said that he will not rule out loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or borrowing from friendly nations as the country struggles to deal with its latest economic crisis.

Umar warned Pakistanis not to expect short-term miracles, saying the country faced growing pressure on its balance of payments — a dire economic situation that was one of the worst in the nation’s history.
“However, we came out of it earlier, and we will come out of it again,” Umar told a press conference at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) office in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The ruling party’s financial guru said: “By end of September, we should be able to set a direction. Urgent decisions have to be made.
“The options available are commercial borrowing and bilateral loans from friendly countries. It could be the IMF, global capital markets or overseas Pakistanis,” he said.
Pakistan’s current account deficit has ballooned to 43 percent at $18 billion from the previous fiscal year. Its foreign exchange reserves are close to rock bottom — barely enough to cover two months of imports — with a widening trade gap approaching $10.3 billion.
Meanwhile, the rupee is extremely volatile against the US dollar, falling over 14 percent in value this year, though there was a slight recovery after the July elections.
Umar blamed the former finance minister, Miftah Ismail, of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) for the crisis.
“The (budget) targets were not realistic. The country was run on raw politics. The decision-making deliberately put the Pakistani economy at risk just to win an election,” he said.
“I can’t remember the last time this happened when you overshot your fiscal deficit by almost 70 percent.”
China, which is investing $57 billion in its China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), reportedly loaned Pakistan $2 billion this month in addition to previous lending.
PML-N, the outgoing ruling party of imprisoned ex-premier Nawaz Sharif, has been criticized for accepting CPEC projects at high cost. However, PTI has said it will not renegotiate the “sovereign guarantee” deals and risk foreign investments.
The party’s 2018 manifesto offers a road map to deal with economic challenges, but experts say bailout packages combined with other measures to drastically reduce debt would bring much-needed economic stability.
“The PTI government needs to take three key measures: First, they need to curtail non-essential imports; second, they need to cut fiscal deficit by bringing down government expenditure and losses of public sector enterprises; and, third, they need to expedite reform of energy sector,” economist Dr. Vaqar Ahmed, of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, told Arab News.
Dr. Rasul Bakhsh Rais, an economist and analyst, urged the government to secure an “IMF package to meet the requirements of the fiscal deficit, and then gain the trust of the business community and overseas Pakistanis to get their foreign funds transferred.” 
PTI is working on launching a dollar bond to appeal to Pakistanis abroad and a Sukook bond to raise funding for the external deficit, said Umar.
President of the Pakistan Economic Forum, Dr. Humayun Iqbal Shami, said: “China can do more in the form of rescheduling of debt repayment. The biggest trade deficit is with China, so we have to talk to China to import more from Pakistan.”
Shami told Arab News that the incoming government must focus on increasing exports. Pakistan relies heavily on imports and is regarded largely as a consumer country.
“The rupee-dollar parity should be fixed at 120 rupees. Then at least $10 billion held over speculation will flow back in to the system,” he said.


Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

Updated 9 sec ago
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Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Supreme Court jailed a former government official accused of human trafficking for four years, reversing a lower court decision to acquit him after people were found in cages in his palm oil plantation.
Condemned internationally and at home, the senior official in the provincial government in North Sumatra, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, had been accused of human trafficking, torture, forced labor, and slavery.
Prosecutors launched an appeal after a lower court acquitted him of the charges in July.
Indonesia’s Supreme Court said he would serve four years in jail, without specifying reasons, in a ruling dated Nov. 15 and seen on the court’s website on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court and prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters has sought comment from Terbit’s lawyer.
The macabre case came to light in 2022, when a police corruption investigation into Terbit found people detained in cages on his property, drawing condemnation from rights groups.
A police investigation found 665 people had been held in cells on his property since 2010, court documents showed.
Terbit, who was jailed for nine years for corruption in 2022, had previously claimed the detained individuals were participating in a drug rehabilitation program.
Prosecutors said they had been tortured and forced to work on his plantation. Six had died in captivity, Indonesia’s rights body found.

Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

Updated 24 min 7 sec ago
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Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani protesters demanding the release of ex-prime minister Imran Khan on Tuesday killed four members of the nation’s security forces, the government said, as the crowds defied police and closed in on the capital’s center.
More than ten thousand protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in central Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, AFP journalists saw, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the government enclave they aim to occupy.
Khan was barred from standing in February elections that were marred by allegations of rigging, sidelined by dozens of legal cases that he claims were confected to prevent his comeback.
But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has defied a government crackdown with regular rallies. Tuesday’s is the largest in the capital since Khan was jailed in August 2023.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “miscreants” involved in the march had killed four members of the paramilitary Rangers force on a city highway leading toward the government sector.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the men had been “run over by a vehicle.”
“These disruptive elements do not seek revolution but bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “This is not a peaceful protest, it is extremism.”
The government said Monday that one police officer had also been killed and nine more were critically wounded by demonstrators who set out toward Islamabad on Sunday.


The capital has been locked down since late Saturday, with mobile Internet sporadically cut and more than 20,000 police flooding the streets, many armed with riot shields and batons.
The government has accused protesters of attempting to derail a state visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrived for a three-day visit on Monday.
Last week, the Islamabad city administration announced a two-month ban on public gatherings.
But PTI convoys traveled from their power base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the most populous province of Punjab, hauling aside roadblocks of stacked shipping containers.
“We are deeply frustrated with the government, they do not know how to function,” 56-year-old protester Kalat Khan told AFP on Monday. “The treatment we are receiving is unjust and cruel.”
The government cited “security concerns” for the mobile Internet outages, while Islamabad’s schools and universities were also ordered shut on Monday and Tuesday.
“Those who will come here will be arrested,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters late Monday at D-Chowk, the public square outside Islamabad’s government buildings that PTI aims to occupy.
PTI’s chief demand is the release of Khan, the 72-year-old charismatic former cricket star who served as premier from 2018 to 2022 and is the lodestar of their party.
They are also protesting alleged tampering in the February polls and a recent government-backed constitutional amendment giving it more power over the courts, where Khan is tangled in dozens of cases.


Sharif’s government has come under increasing criticism for deploying heavy-handed measures to quash PTI’s protests.
“It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents,” read one opinion piece in the English-language Dawn newspaper published Monday.
“This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said “blocking access to the capital, with motorway and highway closures across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has effectively penalized ordinary citizens.”
The US State Department appealed for protesters to refrain from violence, while also urging authorities to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order.”
Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote after falling out with the kingmaking military establishment, which analysts say engineers the rise and fall of Pakistan’s politicians.
But as opposition leader, he led an unprecedented campaign of defiance, with PTI street protests boiling over into unrest that the government cited as the reason for its crackdown.
PTI won more seats than any other party in this year’s election but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to military influence shut them out of power.


Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

MOSCOW: Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.


China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

Updated 26 November 2024
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China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

  • The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait

BEIJING: China’s military said on Tuesday it deployed naval and air forces to monitor and warn a US Navy patrol aircraft that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denouncing the United States for trying to “mislead” the international community.
Around once a month, US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China — missions that always anger Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.
The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait “in international airspace,” adding that the flight demonstrated the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” it said in a statement.
China’s military criticized the flight as “public hype,” adding that it monitored the US aircraft throughout its transit and “effectively” responded to the situation.
“The relevant remarks by the US distort legal principles, confuse public opinion and mislead international perceptions,” the military’s Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to stop distorting and hyping up and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.”
In April, China’s military said it sent fighter jets to monitor and warn a US Navy Poseidon in the Taiwan Strait, a mission that took place just hours after a call between the Chinese and US defense chiefs. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)


Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

Updated 26 November 2024
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Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

KYIV: Russia staged a record number of drone attacks overnight over Ukraine, damaging buildings and “critical infrastructure” in several regions, the air force said Tuesday.
“During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the figure at 188.