Mush regime plunged Pak into poverty: Ishaq Dar

Islamabad, Apr 4: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's eight-year regime beginning October 1999 plunged the country into poverty, which is said to have increased by nearly 40 percent during the said period.

According to the country's new Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, the number of people having purchasing power less than two dollars a day have increased from 33.6 percent to 73.6 percent in past eight years. Negating the last regime's claim of 10 percent decline in the poverty on basis of one dollar a day purchasing power, he said that in the present time the dollar a day formula has become obsolete due to price-hike spiral." "With a dollar, poor cannot fetch all essential commodities," The Nation quoted Dar as saying.

The Finance Minister was speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Joint Management Committee of Pakistan and Italy.

ANI