ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the citizens to declare assets by end of this month to take the country out of sticky economic situation.

In a pre-recorded message on national TV on Friday evening, Imran Khan sought the cooperation of people in overcoming the tax evasion. He said unless public and the government did not cooperate with each other, the debt trap would not end.

The prime minister said the asset declaration scheme gave people a golden chance to declare their assets by June 30. He said citizens could declare their stashed wealth within the country and abroad, dollars, gold, benami accounts and other assets by availing this scheme.

“National debt increased from 6,000 billion rupees to 30,000 billion rupees in last 10 years because of which half of the revenue collected last year was spent on payment of the interest on these loans.

“Dear People of Pakistan, I need you in my goal to collect the tax. Only with your help we can pull ourselves out of this quicksand of loans ,” he said.

PM Imran said the nation was stuck in debt trap, which meant we were taking more loans to pay the interest on previous loans. He said we had reached here because of corruption and tax evasion.

He said 5,500 billion rupees were needed to be collected in taxes for the next year. He said Pakistanis were a generous nation and they had a history of contributing massively in national calamities whether it was 2005 earthquake, 2010 floods or any other disaster.

“If the nation decides, a sum of 8,000 billion rupees can be collected each year which can help overcome our difficulties,” he said.

Imran Khan said the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had complete data of all assets of the people and people could check their data on tax authority’s website.