Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan giving a speech during the Pakistani Community meeting at Al Wakra Stadium yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula
Addressing thousands of excited community members, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday lauded Qatar’s leadership for developing infrastructure and human capital of the country.
“I visited Qatar many years ago but today I was amazed to see the change in Qatar. It is not the issue of natural resources rather leadership’s integrity and sincerity that counts,” he said, adding that there were many resource rich countries in the world but they had lagged behind.
Striking a chord at a packed Al Wakra Stadium, he said Qatar’s leaders gave priority to their nation and spent generously on education and development that made the difference. Imran Khan thanked Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for ‘warm welcome and hospitality’.
Imran Khan said that countries did not prosper just on the basis of wealth and resources as they were many resource-rich countries that collapsed. “Countries move forward with their leaders’ honesty and sincerity,” he added.
He said that Qatari businessmen in meeting with him had expressed their interest to invest in Pakistan. “The Qatari businessmen told me that they were willing to do business in Pakistan but in the past got disappointed due to corruption and numerous taxes. I assured them that now there will be no such issues,” he said.
Khan said that the number of taxes in Pakistan had been brought down from 36 to 16 and the government would further reduce their number. “Don’t bother about corruption in Pakistan now. Not even a single scandal of corruption surfaced in Pakistan in the last five months of our government,” he added.
He said that Pakistan was blessed with all natural resources. “Pakistan can earn billions of dollars by just promoting its tourism sector. We have beaches, mountains, historical places like Mohenjo-daro and oldest cities Peshawar, Lahore, Multan. We have the holiest places of Sikhs and Buddhists. I promise you that I will turn country’s tourism into a source of foreign revenue so that we should not take loans,” he noted.
He lauded role of overseas Pakistanis for the development of the country. “Today their remittances are playing a great role in running the country. Overseas Pakistanis are the future of Pakistan.”
On the other hand, he said, Pakistan’s enemies were those people who had plundered national wealth and indulged in money laundering causing double harm to the country. He said that Pakistan enjoyed special blessings of Allah Almighty and it came into existence on holy day of Ramadan 27. “Pakistan will stay unhurt and will prosper,” he added.
The large number of Pakistani community at Al Wakra Stadium kept on chanting slogans in favour of Pakistan and Imran Khan during Khan’s speech.
Pakistan Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi also addressed the gathering. He said that conspiracies against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government would never succeed and opposition parties in the country would not be able to erect a hurdle in way of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
