Ag Agencies
ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet has decided to restore food and goods transport in the country “immediately” amid provincial lockdowns and said it will launch a three-year Sukuk bond as the country comes to grips with a worsening coronavirus pandemic and a battered economy.
The decisions came after a cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, on Tuesday. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Firdous Awan briefed reporters about the cabinet decisions.
The government has been struggling to balance between the economy and containing the spread of a virus that has so far infected over 1,900 people and left 26 dead at the time of this report.
She said the Prime Minister “and the whole cabinet” expressed their displeasure over the delay in the implementation of the National Coordination Committee’s (NCC) decision taken in its last meeting of restoring goods transport so that the supply chain of the daily use items was not affected.
The Sindh government, she said, had so far not fully implemented the NCC decision as all import items from abroad landed at ports in Karachi, where sufficient labour force was not available due to the lockdown to handle them.
She was referring to the Sindh government’s strict enforcement of social distancing. The province, which houses the main port for the country, has been at the forefront of efforts to contain the spread of the virus.
Awan said the Prime Minister issued directives to the Rangers to remove hurdles in the movement of goods transport “as early as possible” to restore the supply chain of edible items.
She also said the government will be launching three-year Sukuk bonds. “The bond has been issued 19 times previously. This is an important and positive step in the promotion of Islamic banking,” she said. Awan said with the issuance of the bond, an uptick in financing could be expected.
“With this bond, not only liquidity issues will be addressed but with a Shariah compliant return and a Rs700bn target, the government will be able to develop an action plan to aid the economy,” she added.
The Prime Minister’s aide said the cabinet also expressed its “dismay” over what she said was Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif’s “political point-scoring at the critical juncture”.
She urged the opposition to “avoid politicising the current situation and join hands with the government in its endeavour to contain the coronavirus”.
She claimed the opposition leader was trying to use the pandemic to keep him politically relevant but the country and the nation could not afford such a divisive approach which could harm the fight against the pandemic.
Shahbaz, she said, had better end his self-isolation at Jati Umra and join the fight against the coronavirus and give “practical proposals as it is not the time to indulge in petty politics”.
She said it was ironic that Shahbaz was criticising the health sector despite remaining in power for 10 years in the biggest province of the country. “The Sharif family should donate some of their assets to the fund set up by the government to support the people affected by the ongoing lockdown in the country,” she added.
Dr Firdous said the Prime Minister briefed the cabinet on the two-pronged strategy of saving the people from the spread of coronavirus and at the same time saving the country’s economy from its negative impacts, besides taking steps to revive construction and other industries, which provided employment to the poor labour class.
She said Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza and Dr Faisal Sultan, the Premier’s focal person on coronavirus, briefed the meeting about the latest situation and the steps being taken to control the deadly virus. It was told that about 25 persons had unfortunately died whereas the condition of 12 was critical and they were on ventilator.
The Prime Minister stated policies were being updated in line with the situation, which was being monitored on daily basis, she added. The SAPM added the cabinet gave formal approval to Rs 1.2 trillion stimulus package to deal with the adverse impacts of the coronavirus outbreak on the country’s economy.
It also issued directives for shift to e-governance and paperless governance and asked the ministries and departments to upload their information on their websites to save the money wasted on
purchase of papers. The cabinet also gave approval to 15 international protocol conventions in the meeting.
