Pakistan: Political unrest compounds economic misery

DW (English)

Pakistan's caretaker government needs to drum up foreign investment to help stabilize the economy, but ongoing political uncertainty is keeping many investors away.

Transcript

00:00 You can look at electricity bills, you can look at the prices of FMCGs, the fast moving

00:10 goods.

00:11 Everything is going up to the roof.

00:14 So I don't think so we are going to be prospering anytime soon.

00:24 The government will have to finance 10 billion of current account deficit for this year.

00:35 So the total financing requirement would be around 26 or 27 billion.

00:40 So how they are going to arrange?

00:42 It will be a difficult challenge for the caretaker government.

00:46 Whenever there is a political uncertainty, investment doesn't come.

00:50 Investment will only come when there is a political instability in the government and

00:54 Pakistan badly need investment.

00:57 Pakistan badly need investment of 5 to 10 billion US dollars from abroad so that we

01:04 can stabilize our exchange rate and we can repay our debt.

01:09 Common people want election.

01:28 Election has been delayed for various reasons.

01:31 Earlier they were delayed in provinces.

01:35 Now federal election has been delayed for population census because the result of the

01:40 population has been announced with a certain delay.

01:46 So I think all delay is impacting the people.

01:50 Nothing is going to happen to the elites of this country.

01:54 Only the people of this country will suffer.

01:57 If elections would have been held on time, we might have seen some hope that the country

02:14 is going to go in the right direction or at least there is some relief for common people.

02:21 But with everyday inflation is getting worse and I don't think so from common man's point

02:27 of view.

02:28 Things are looking good and particularly it's very difficult even to get common commodities.

02:34 Prices have increased for food and the recent surge in petrol prices as well has also added

02:40 to that.

02:41 [Music]

02:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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