‘No textbooks for college students’: Flawed insurance policies, international inflation carry extreme paper disaster in Pakistan

A worldwide inflation and flawed financial insurance policies have caused a extreme paper disaster in Pakistan, leading to a scarcity of textbooks for college students within the subsequent educational 12 months.

Customers browse at a bookstore in Lahore. (File photograph)

A extreme paper disaster in Pakistan is threatening to disrupt the tutorial actions within the nation. Students in Pakistan are unlikely to obtain their books subsequent educational 12 months, which is able to start in August, mentioned Pakistan’s paper associations.

The disaster has been caused by a mix of worldwide inflation, flawed insurance policies of the Pakistani authorities, and the monopoly of the native paper industries.

All Pakistan Paper Merchant Association, Pakistan Association of Printing Graphic Art Industry (PAPGAI), and different organisations related to the paper business, together with the nation’s main economist Qaiser Bengali sounded the alarm.

A neighborhood media outlet from Pakistan reported that because of the growing price of paper, publishers aren’t with the ability to decide the value of books. “Due to this, textbook boards of Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will not be able to print textbooks,” it reported.

Meanwhile, Pakistani columnist Ayaz Amir questioned the nation’s “incompetent and failed rulers”. He highlighted that Pakistan is trapped in a vicious cycle of taking loans to pay again earlier loans. He wrote, “We have seen the rules of Ayub Khan (Former President of Pakistan), Yahiya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. We have seen the governments of dictators and they all had one thing in common, take loans to solve the problems and then take more loans to pay back the previous loan.”

He mentioned Pakistan has now at some extent the place no one is prepared to provide the nation any extra loans. “We could not solve the economic problems of our country when the population was 11 crores during the regime of Zia ul Haq. How our incompetent and failed rulers are going to improve the economy when the population has doubled to 22 crores?” he wrote

China, in the mean time, is profiting from the state of affairs putting a tough discount with Pakistan on the paybacks of its loans and different investments. “In the fiscal year 2021-2022, Pakistan paid around USD 150 million towards interest to China for using a USD 4.5 billion Chinese trade finance facility. In the financial year 2019-2020, Pakistan paid USD 120 million towards interest on USD 3 billion in loans,” reported information company ANI.

(With inputs from ANI)