Shaukat Tarin, the head of the PTI and a former finance minister, criticized the IMF on Saturday for “leaking” audios that were claimed to him on the program and urged the government to renegotiate and seek assistance from it in the light of devastating floods.
Miftah Ismail, Tarin’s replacement, then gave a harsh rebuttal to his news conference.
On Monday, two audio recordings of a guy identified as Tarin purportedly ordering the finance ministers of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to alert both the federal government and the IMF were released.
that they would not be able to commit to a province budget surplus in view of the recent floods that have wreaked havoc in Pakistan and surfaced on television channels and social media.
In a letter sent last week to the Ministry of Finance, KP Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra expressed his administration’s inability to produce a provincial surplus this year.
The ruling coalition said that the audios were nothing more than a plot to sabotage the state’s agreement with the major lender, which led to criticism of the PTI.
Later, Azam Nazir Tarar, the law minister, announced that a forensic investigation into the leaks will be carried out.
During a press conference in Karachi today, the former federal minister said that those who leaked the recording just hours even before the IMF board meeting were really the ones who “planned” to do so to jeopardize the accord.”
“Whose tapes were leaked? Never did we. How would we leak the tapes if we didn’t produce them? he asked.
“So, were we harming the program by making the audios public, or were you? You had the option of doing it on Tuesday or later. Why did you act in such a manner right before the meeting?
If the IMF had heard the audio, according to Tarin, the actual issue would have arisen.
Despite the fact that the surpluses from the provinces are in the form of an MoU (memorandum of understanding), the program wouldn’t have been harmed.
