increase in prices. The government also decided to increase the GST rate from 27 to 37 percent for the High Speed Diesel to keep its price unchanged for March 2015.
“We have stabilised the POL prices for consecutive two months, but I want to make it clear that this situation cannot persist for a longer period if the prices in the international market go up,” said the minister.
The minister said that FATF had put Pakistan into the category of grey or risky countries three years back and further deterioration could put the country into the blacklisted category that could result into reconfirmation of opening up of letters of credit (L/Cs) and increased cost by four percent. He said that the PML-N government had fought to reverse this status in the last 21 months and a FATF review team had also visited Pakistan to review the actions taken by Islamabad in this regard.
“Finally, I wrote a letter to FATF on February 21, 2015 to apprise them of the actions taken by Islamabad to curb money laundering and terrorist financing, especially in the context of the National Action Plan (NAP),” he said and added that the FATF had now removed Pakistan from the grey list and put the country on the white list, which indicated that the country was taking satisfactory actions to curb money laundering and terrorist financing.
“Pakistan appreciates this decision of FATF,” he said, adding that it was an evolving subject for all the countries, and Islamabad would continue to move ahead in accordance with its home-grown agenda to implement the NAP effectively.
The minister said that the World Bank also restored the IBRD funding for Pakistan that would increase the resource envelop by an additional $2 billion for the country. He said that the WB had committed around $11 billion for Pakistan for the period of 2015-19 mainly for four sectors of the economy i.e. including economy, energy, extremism and education/health sectors. He said that the government had not yet decided the plan to invest this additional amount of $2 billion, but this additional money would be utilised in high priority projects of the country.