'Imran Khan running Pakistan only for his friends': Oppn slams PTI govt over unrealistic GDP growth figures

Islamabad/Lahore [Pakistan], May 23 : Pakistan's opposition parties on Saturday unanimously slammed Imran Khan's government over expected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate figures that is estimated would hit 3.94 per cent for the fiscal year 2020-21.
Leader of the Opposition and President of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, in a series of tweets, said the country's growth rate was 5.8 per cent during the PML-N tenure, but now the premier is claiming a mere 3.9 per cent growth rate which is fake, reported The News International.
"An SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) representative objected to the figure being overstated. The Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), in its first year, had increased the original figure from 1.9 per cent to 3.3 per cent. This year too, they lied," he claimed.
Shahbaz also said that independent economists had predicted a decline in real incomes for Pakistanis this year. "Therefore, the growth rate -- put forward by the PTI -- this year is also unrealistic, which will be lower when it will be reviewed," he said.
Shahbaz said every week since February 05, prices have been showing a 13 per cent increase. "Prices have increased by 17 per cent this week compared to last year," he said.
The PML-N President said middle-class households had faced a severe setback as the inflation rate was so high that the food prices had witnessed an increase of 14 per cent, reported The News International.
"Imran Khan is running the country only for his friends," he said.
The opposition leader said the PTI has left five million people unemployed and 20 million in extreme poverty.
"In a successful economy, inflation is low, employment is high, the government plans schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Where does our economy stand?"
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the PTI-led government has a unique talent in being "absolutely shameless when it boldly and brazenly misleads the people".
The federal government has, since its first day in office, been fudging numbers and stacking statistics in their favour, Bilawal said in a statement.
"Fudging economic figures may feed the large egos in the government, but it doesn't feed the people. These alleged facts and figures tantamount to gas-lighting the lived experience of the people who are being crushed under the economic failures of Imran Khan," he said.
The PPP chairman said that since the PTI formed government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa nearly a decade ago, poverty levels had increased exponentially, with figures showing that poverty has gone up from 9 per cent to a whopping 27 per cent today, reported The News International.
The government had earlier estimated a GDP growth of 2.1 percent for the outgoing fiscal year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, on the other hand, had predicted the GDP growth in the range of 1.5 percent for the current fiscal year.