On Thursday, August 3, Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif announced that Pakistan’s National Assembly will be dissolved on August 9. The move will come three days prior to the scheduled date of end of term of the govt. As the five-year term of the government comes to an end, fresh elections will be held in the country within 90 days.
According to the Pakistani constitution, elections must be held within 60 days if the assembly completes its term. However, if the assembly is dissolved prematurely, as will be the case here, this period is extended to 90 days.
The Pakistani PM informed those in attendance at the reception that the ruling PML-N had completed internal consultations and that a final round of discussions with allies on the caretaker setup will be held today, a process that is expected to take at least three days. A meeting with allies on the caretaker set-up is also expected to be held on Friday through video conferencing.
At the dinner, the prime minister of Pakistan updated his allies on the coalition government’s performance, claiming that the government had improved revenue collection by 13% in 15 months as more than 1.3 million additional taxpayers were added to the tax net.
Sharif further claimed that electricity sector recoveries remained above 90%. However, it should be highlighted that the circular debt has increased by 18% which is Rs393 billion in the last 11 months.
Moreover, Sharif claimed that tremendous progress has been made in the IT industry over the last four months and that the total volume of IT exports increased to $2.6 billion during the previous financial year.
Shehbaz Sharif criticised past governments for wasting billions of rupees from the national exchequer owing to obstacles to public projects such as the Haveli Bahadur Shah Power Plant.
The dinner on August 3 was attended by Pakistani Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani, Speaker of National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, PPP leaders Yousuf Raza Gilani, MQM Convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, JUI-F leader Asad Mehmood, Balochistan Awami Party leaders Khalid Magsi and Senator Ahmed Khan, Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) Chairman Shahzain Bugti, Aslam Bhootani, Mohsin Dawar.
