Islamabad, June 10 (INP): Former finance minister and PMLN leader Ishaq Dar criticized PM Imran Khan’s address to the nation on the issues of public debt and said that he misguided the nation and tried to conceal his own failure on account of debt management.

In a statement issued from London, he said it is a totally wrong to say that public debt has increased from six thousand billion rupees to thirty thousand billion rupees during last ten years.

[timed-content-server show="06/11/2019 01:00 Asia/Karachi"]In fact, he said the total public debt was 24,900 billion rupees on June 30, 2018. While cash deposit of Rs. 1901 billion was available in the national exchequer. So the net debt was Rs. 23051 billion, he added. Ishaq Dar further said, increase in the public debt was only 17,000 billion rupees during the last ten years. The government, he pointed out, had already told the Parliament, that the public debt was 24,900 billion rupees. He demanded that that government should make public the statement that it had given in the parliament to this effect. About the 17,000 billion rupees public debt, he said out of it 8,000 billion was taken during the government of Pakistan People Party, while 9,000 was availed during the PML’s tenure from 2013 to 2018. These figures are posted on the website of the State Bank of Pakistan and the same was provided to the international institutions. The PMLN utilized the public debt in building of power projects to tackle energy crisis and to overcome the crisis of gas’s load-shedding as well building of road network. INP/Javed[/timed-content-server]