'Bad days ahead,' warns Pak's finance minister

Karachi: Pakistan's Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on Friday said the government would continue to curb imports for the next three months, as he warned of "bad days" ahead for the cash-strapped country.

Addressing a ceremony at the Pakistan Stock Exchange here, the minister said that the government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was suffering because of the economic policies taken by the erstwhile Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) regime led by ousted prime minister Imran Khan.

"During the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, the country's budget deficit was USD 1,600 billion, and in the last four years under the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) regime, that figure ballooned to USD 3,500," Geo TV quoted Ismail

as saying.

No country can grow and be stable with this kind of current account deficit," he asserted.