Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto conceded her defeat in the 1997 Parliamentary elections and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 1998. Read Less

Bhutto was an active and founding member of the Council of Women World Leaders, a network of current and former prime ministers and presidents.

Benazir Bhutto was an economist by profession; therefore during her terms, Benazir Bhutto had no Minister to lead the Ministry of the Treasury. Benazir Bhutto appointed herself as Treasury Minister, taking the charge of economic and financial affairs on her hand. Benazir sought to improve the country's economy which was declining as the time was passing. Benazir disagreed with her father's nationalization and socialist economics. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Benazir attempted to privatize major industries that were nationalized in 1970s. Benazir Bhutto promised to end the nationalization programme and to carried out the industrialization programme by means other than the state intervention. But controversially Benazir Bhutto did not carry out the denationalization programme or liberalization of the economy during her first government. No nationalized units were privatized, few economic regulations were reviewed. Pakistan suffered a currency crisis when the government failed to arrest the 30% fall in the value of the Pakistani Rupee from ₨. 21 to ₨.30 compared to the United States dollar. Soon economic progress became her top priority but her investment and industrialization programs faced major setbacks due to conceptions formed by investors based upon her People's Party nationalization program in 1970s. By the 1990s, Khan and Benazir Bhutto's government had also ultimately lost the currency war with the Indian currency when the Indian Rupee beat the value of Pakistan rupee for the first time in 1970s. Read Less