{"id":379425,"date":"2018-10-02T23:52:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T22:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/pakistani-premier-imran-khan-imposes-austerity-mini-budget\/"},"modified":"2018-10-02T23:52:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T22:52:16","slug":"pakistani-premier-imran-khan-imposes-austerity-mini-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/pakistani-premier-imran-khan-imposes-austerity-mini-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani premier Imran Khan imposes austerity mini-budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Pakistani premier Imran Khan imposes austerity mini-budget<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Athiyan Silva and Kumaran Ira<br \/>\n    <br \/>2 October 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>After coming into power by exploiting social anger and anti-war sentiment, the ruling Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) of Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Imran Khan is positioning itself to drop his limited electoral promises and attack the working class with deep budget cuts. Khan\u2019s pro-austerity and pro-imperialist line have been exposed barely two months after his election. At the same time, he is aligning Pakistan with US imperialism while seeking to renegotiate financial deals with China.<\/p>\n<p>On September 18, the PTI presented the 2018 Finance Supplementary (Amendment) Bill, dubbed the \u201cmini-budget,\u201d in the National Assembly. The mini-budget was closely coordinated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and was presented after Pakistani officials held a video conference with the IMF officials at the Finance Ministry.<\/p>\n<p>Presenting the budget, Finance Minister Asad Umar claimed that Pakistan faces \u201cdifficult times\u201d and called for \u201cdifficult\u201d measures to slash budget deficits. Noting that the budget deficit had grown to 6.6 percent from 4.1 percent, Umar said: \u201cThe most dangerous situation is that if we continue as we have, the budget deficit will expand 7.2 percent by the end of the ongoing year. This is the assessment of the finance ministry as well as economic experts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Umar claimed these measures were the only way to halt the fall in the rupee\u2019s value against the dollar and save Pakistan\u2019s plunging economy, warning that the country\u2019s foreign exchange reserves had fallen to the equivalent of two months\u2019 worth of imports. While Pakistan\u2019s foreign currency reserves have plunged to $9.3 billion, external debt stands at $92 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Umar said that&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/10\/02\/imra-o02.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Pakistani premier Imran Khan imposes austerity mini-budget By Athiyan Silva and Kumaran Ira 2 October 2018 After coming into power by exploiting social anger and anti-war sentiment, the ruling Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) of Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Imran Khan is positioning itself to drop his limited electoral promises and attack the working class with deep budget [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-379425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}