ISLAMABAD, 17 Feb: Saddique Shah, a 53-year-old construction worker, sat along a sidewalk with his fellow workers on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad, his head hung low as he worried.
\nWhat if he failed to find work Friday, for the second day in a row, just as Pakistan considers a tax hike amid looming economic troubles?
\nStarting early in the morning, Shah\u2019s job is to pick up bricks, gravel, cement and sand and hand them to masons who use them on construction sites. He is paid 1,600 rupees ($6) a day \u2014 barely enough for basics like food. He doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019ll do if Pakistan\u2019s government follows through on its plan for new taxes in the coming weeks.
\n\u201cI could not get work yesterday, and I am waiting for customers since morning, and today I don\u2019t have even money to get groceries before going to my home,\u201d said Shah, who found work at midday after several costly hours without any.
\nPakistan\u2019s National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, is expected to approve a tax hike Monday in a step toward meeting the terms of a 2019 bailout worth $6 billion from the International Monetary Fund. The increase would then need a sign-off from President Arif Alvi.
\nEconomists say Pakistan is caught. It must slash subsidies and raise taxes to comply with the bailout terms and release a $1.2 billion portion of the deal that\u2019s been stalled since December. But doing so would make food, gas, and power more expensive and drive up the hardship on poor people \u2014 like Shah.
\nEconomists say if nuclear-armed Pakistan gets an IMF bailout, it will avoid a default. But critics say that the poor tend to be the ultimate victims of economic mismanagement and public austerity.
\nTaxes are included in utility bills and are added to the price of food. Increasing desperation means an increase in crime, which law enforcement experts in Pakistan say is on the rise. Protests add unease, as does Pakistan\u2019s recent wave of violence. The country already was struggling to recover from record-breaking floods last summer that killed 1,739 people and made millions of Pakistanis homeless.
\n\u201cThe poor will specially pay a very heavy price for the mismanagement of the economy,\u201d said economist Ashfaq Ahmad.
\nA more expensive future weighs on worried Pakistanis.
\n\u201cHow will we get out of this new storm of inflation?\u201d Farzaba Bibi, a housewife who lives in the Phulgran village near Islamabad, asked in a muffled voice, as she sat in an open farm field with her children.
\n\u201cLife has become very difficult now,\u201d said Ashfaq Ahmad, 52, who works as a junior clerk at a government department in Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan.
\nSaqib Kaif, a poet, said the latest increase in taxes will make many people jobless. \u201cMost of the companies will reduce the numbers of their employees to curtail production-cost and expenses,\u201d he said.
\nAbout 21% of Pakistan\u2019s 220 million people live in poverty, according to the Asian Development Bank. The majority are low- and middle-income, and less than 10% are wealthy elites. Economists say recent floods and political and economic instability have pushed more people below the poverty line.
\n\u201cPoverty and uncertain situations also affect mental health, and this is what we are witnessing in society,\u201d Farwa Naqvi, an Islamabad-based psychotherapist told The Associated Press. She said that \u201cliving in survival mode for too long, deprivation of basic needs and strangulation of hopes adversely affect mental health.\u201d
\nPakistan is low on foreign reserves, which slightly improved to $3 billion this week after dipping due to uncertainty about the ongoing talks between Pakistan and the IMF.
\nThe war in Ukraine also is taking a toll. The cost of importing wheat and fuel has risen sharply since Russia\u2019s invasion last year. Imran Khan, who was then the country\u2019s prime minister, traveled to Moscow and refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
\nThe IMF is imposing strict conditions on Pakistan \u2014 the latest country in the region to have to submit to its oversight.
\nUnlike Pakistan, neighboring India went to the IMF for loans seven times. But New Delhi introduced landmark reforms in 1991 and has not gone back to the fund for help. India\u2019s foreign exchange reserves were $575.3 billion earlier this month.
\n\u201cPakistan has gone to the IMF 23 times. Why? Because we as a nation never opted for self-reliance,\u201d said Ashfaq Ahmad, the economist.
\nHowever, current Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif blames his predecessor, Khan, for violating the IMF terms. Khan was ousted through a no-confidence vote in the Parliament last April.
\nThe crisis has affected daily life. In January, Pakistan ordered shopping malls and markets to close by 8:30 p.m. as part of a new energy conservation plan aimed at easing the economic crisis. But, the orders were ignored.
\nLast year, Pakistan imposed a ban on all imports and raw materials, except essential items and medicines. It gradually led to the partial closure of scores of factories and layoffs of thousands of employees.
\nMillions of flood survivors in Pakistan still rely on the government\u2019s help for food, tents, medicine, drinking water and cash donated by local and global groups.
\n\u201cWe have been forgotten by all,\u201d said Janat Bibi, 45, whose house was demolished by floods in the Swat valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She said her husband died in the flood and she is relying on help from relatives. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD, 17 Feb: Saddique Shah, a 53-year-old construction worker, sat along a sidewalk with his fellow workers on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad, his head hung low as he worried. What if he failed to find work Friday, for the second day in a row, just as Pakistan considers a tax hike amid looming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}