A few days ago, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif proposed a lot of cuts to save 200 billion rupees each year.Due to the growing economic crisis, he requested cabinet officials and advisors to forego expensive automobiles and salaries. More than half of the expensive automobiles handed to cabinet ministers and other officials, however, had yet to be returned.

Despite the authorized austerity push in February this year, several top officials were using official SUVs and sedans with displacements greater than 1800 cc, according to a Dawn news report.

“The policy has not impressed the senior judiciary and parliamentary forums,” a meeting of the monitoring committee on the implementation of austerity measures said.

Sources said, “The meeting was presided over by Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. In a compliance report, it was told that out of 30 luxury vehicles, 14 had been returned by cabinet members, but 16 are still in use.”

Concerned that cabinet ministers and other government officials had not returned expensive cars, the meeting asked the cabinet division to return the expensive cars within three days.It also discussed the removal of security vehicles, according to Dawn.

All federal ministries and government offices in Pakistan were required to decrease spending by 15% under these austerity measures, and he had also urged his ministers and advisors to forego salaries, allowances, luxury automobiles, international vacations, and business class travel.

At the time, the ministers agreed to the measures freely, saying that all cabinet members would give up their salaries and benefits and pay all of their electricity bills out of their own wallets.

Pakistan’s economy is failing, and the government is awaiting a much-needed USD 1.1 billion tranche of money from the International Monetary Fund, which is situated in Washington. To release financing from its delayed IMF $6.5 billion loan program, the crisis-hit government has adopted a number of policy measures, including greater taxes, higher energy costs, and raising interest rates to the highest in 25 years.