So Asad Umar asked to resign, bold step indeed. Performance is the first priority in this time of crisis and if Khan didn't find his performance to be satisfactory and good enough then it's a brave call. Asad Umar is a selfless person, I always respected him and respect him even more after today's press conference۔
Despite all the media hype against him it is also truth that he inherited the worst economic crisis of country's history that was designed specially for him by the previous government. With a bleak foreign reserve condition, with the country having the capacity to purchase only few weeks of imports, he still managed to get the country out of that absolute misery. He managed to give 4 basic economic indicators a positive direction, decreased imports, increased and facilitated exports, decreased trade deficit, decreased petroleum tax levy as promised. Things seemed right on paper and in numbers but maybe still not good enough as the crisis was humongous.
People labelled him failure for two basic things, inflation and the price of dollar. As for the dollar price, recently Hafeez Pasha in his book and the ex finance minister of PMLN Ayesha Ghous Pasha on a show admitted how Ishaq Dar spent billions of dollars to keep the dollar stable at Rs.100 artificially. And when all those spending on dollar were stopped, dollar jumped to its actual price, that is almost 140 and all the blame is put upon Asad Umar. And inflation was an obvious outcome and consequence of all this. It was an inevitable trap set for him, inevitable because these technicalities can never be explained to layman and an average street Joe, but at least Imran Khan could have seen all this, we are still not sure what or who forced him to remove his Waseem Akram from the pace attack. But Asad Umar did very well for a beginner, he actually did the fire fighting and also became the casualty. Alas he paid the price and took the blame for what he wasn't responsible at all. I'll call him a scapegoat.
Hope the new finance minister takes this boat even further and remembers Asad Umar when he reaps the fruits of his initiatives.
Despite all the media hype against him it is also truth that he inherited the worst economic crisis of country's history that was designed specially for him by the previous government. With a bleak foreign reserve condition, with the country having the capacity to purchase only few weeks of imports, he still managed to get the country out of that absolute misery. He managed to give 4 basic economic indicators a positive direction, decreased imports, increased and facilitated exports, decreased trade deficit, decreased petroleum tax levy as promised. Things seemed right on paper and in numbers but maybe still not good enough as the crisis was humongous.
People labelled him failure for two basic things, inflation and the price of dollar. As for the dollar price, recently Hafeez Pasha in his book and the ex finance minister of PMLN Ayesha Ghous Pasha on a show admitted how Ishaq Dar spent billions of dollars to keep the dollar stable at Rs.100 artificially. And when all those spending on dollar were stopped, dollar jumped to its actual price, that is almost 140 and all the blame is put upon Asad Umar. And inflation was an obvious outcome and consequence of all this. It was an inevitable trap set for him, inevitable because these technicalities can never be explained to layman and an average street Joe, but at least Imran Khan could have seen all this, we are still not sure what or who forced him to remove his Waseem Akram from the pace attack. But Asad Umar did very well for a beginner, he actually did the fire fighting and also became the casualty. Alas he paid the price and took the blame for what he wasn't responsible at all. I'll call him a scapegoat.
Hope the new finance minister takes this boat even further and remembers Asad Umar when he reaps the fruits of his initiatives.
