Pakistan striving hard to attract FDI: Dar

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar said on Thursday that Pakistan would be arranging investment conference in UK in coming weeks in order to attract foreign direct investment at a time when everyone was admitting turnaround achieved by Islamabad on economic front.

“We are going to arrange investment conference in UK to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) from Pakistani Diaspora and others,” the Finance Minister told The News outside the Q Block (Finance Ministry) here on Thursday.

The minister, who had returned back from visiting abroad along with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that the government did not yet have any plan to go for another Euro bond.

He said that he would go to Dubai on coming Monday for holding policy level talks for completion of 10th review under $6.4 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF).He said that only sick minded people were depicting negative things as he met different leaders and financial institutions where everyone admitted that Pakistan achieved turnaround in amazing time.

According to last Economic Survey, the FDI inflows posted a growth of 10.2 percent and reached to $2,057.3 million against $1,866.3 million in the same period of FY14. The major FDI inflows are from China, US, UAE, UK & Italy. Communications, oil & gas exploration, financial business, power and chemicals remained the main recipient of sectors of FDI.

However, another top official of Finance Ministry told this correspondent that Pakistan was expected to successfully complete the 10th review under the Fund programme paving the way for release of 11th tranche of $500 million around mid of March 2016.

“The smooth sailing is expected in the coming review talks but Islamabad’s economic team will have to convince the IMF team on presenting feasible privatisation plan related to PIA, Pakistan Steel Mills and power distribution companies,” said the official.

Under the ongoing review talks, Pakistan has delivered on all five targets including budget deficit and net international reserves (NIR) for end December 2015.The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had accumulated foreign currency reserves through spot purchasing of $750 million in the first quarter (July-Sept) period of the current fiscal year.

The country’s total foreign reserves stood at $20.502 billion on January 22, 2016.The break-up of the foreign reserves position shows that foreign reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan stands at $15.646 billion and net reserves held by commercial banks were $4.855 billion.

During the week ending January 22, 2016, SBP’s liquid reserves decreased by $105 million to $15.647 billion, compared to $15.752 billion in the previous week. During the week, SBP made payments of $109 million on account of external debt servicing.