Debt trap now really strangulating national economy: Kashif Saeed Sheikh

KARACHI, Nov 21 (SABAH): Expressing serious concern about a recent report of Moody’s Investors Services (Moody’s) that the interest costs in Pakistan will account for close to 40 percent of total spending in 2025, up from around a quarter in 2021, Jamaat-e-Isalmi (JI) Sindh Amir Kashif Saeed Sheikh said that the debt trap now is really strangulating our national economy.

He said that the international lenders like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) have become new East India Companies for Pakistan, looting and plundering our resources through interest-based loans. He said that without breaking this deadly loan trap the country could not overcome poverty, hunger and deprivation.

Kashif Saeed asked that how a country could survive when it spends 40 percent of its budget just to pay interest of its loans. He said the constitution of Pakistan forbids interest-based economy and our apex courts have also given verdicts about interest. He said; however, the rulers are not ready to shun their slavery of the capitalist system and ban interest in Pakistan.

He demanded that our Parliament should pass a law that the country would not get any foreign loans in future and use its maximum resources to pay off its debt burden as soon as possible. He said the debt trap is the most serious and pressing issue of Pakistan but the establishment is creating non-issues like ongoing political Noora Kushtues (fix-matches) to divert the attention of the masses from the real issues facing the nation and country.