Cash-strapped Pakistan's $350 billion economy is in a meltdown, with inflation at a record 38%.
The economy had suffered in the pandemic and his restaurant business closed. With work avenues drying up and sky-high inflation blowing a hole in his budget, the 47-year-old cobbled together $7,600 for a trafficker to smuggle him into Europe, where he hoped to rebuild the life he once had, his brother Muhammad Sarwar Bhatti, 53, told Reuters.
Cash-strapped Pakistan's $350 billion economy is in a meltdown, with inflation at a record 38%. A rapidly depreciating currency and external deficit led the government to adopt drastic measures over the past year to avoid default. Crossings of the central Mediterranean via Libya, mainly to Italy and Greece, nearly doubled, accounting for about half of the total. Currently, Pakistanis are the No. 3 nationality registered in Italy coming from Libya, after Egyptians and Bangladeshis, a Frontex spokesperson told Reuters in an email.
"We used to make ends meet, he could feed his family. But it had become impossible", she told Reuters in their cramped three-room home where seven people live."He said, 'Mother, our conditions will improve'. He said he would send me to do Hajj, he would get his sister married," Bibi recalled. "Our houses are built too, we stay there, but the reason for building them in Pakistan is that we come here with our children after a year or two to spend a few months and relax," said Nazim.
"Even the educated class are having lots of trouble getting jobs" in Pakistan, Ali's cousin Anish Raza told Reuters at their family home."A person's desires make one desperate." Limited data the agency shared with Reuters showed that 401 people were caught crossing Pakistan's borders illegally in the first four months of 2023, up about 50% from a year earlier, while 15,371 deportees were repatriated in the same period, mostly from Turkey and Greece.With foreign exchange reserves to cover less than a month's imports, Pakistan risks running out of money.
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