Ishaq Dar is appointed federal minister of finance and revenue.
President Dr Arif Alvi administered the oath to Dar during a ceremony at the Aiwan-i-Sadr, which was also attended by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The President on the advice of the Prime Minister has appointed Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar as Federal Minister with immediate effect, a notification was issued by the Cabinet Division shortly afterwards.
On Sunday, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and PM Shehbaz nominated Dar as finance minister, despite opposition from PML-N. He was previously appointed on three occasions.
On Tuesday, Mr Dar was sworn in as a senator. He had been on self-exile for nearly five years.
Later on Wednesday, Dar appeared before the media outside the Ministry of Finance and said what he thought about the economy and the way forward.
“When the PML-N left government, food inflation was two per cent, the reserves were at their highest, the rupee was stable at 104.50 and Pakistan’s GDP was 6.3%.”
He said the PTI government had done little to address the economy’s ills. “You name it, and it’s there,” he said as he pointed out the high inflation and interest rates.
The damage to PTI’s four years in office cannot be reversed in mere months, he said.
“But as a nation, we have a lot of challenges [but] we have successfully faced them in the past as well.”
The minister said that the country faced “deep problems”, but the government would do its best to solve them.
“This was a massive lie,” Dar said, speaking to reporters about his previous policy of injecting dollars into the market to keep the rate low. We did not have dollars to inject, he said, adding that the PML-N government built up foreign reserves of Rs 23 billion.
He stated that this was “natural progression and development” and a result of PML-N’s policies.
