MILAN: Pakistan asked the Asian Development Bank for ‘much stronger financial assistance’ on Monday so that the government could continue delivering on the development programme undertaken since takeover in perilous economic conditions.
Islamabad has also requested a decade long strategy foreseeing transformative improvements in specific sectors that were aligned with the country’s national and provincial priorities.
Speaking to the ADB’s 58 Annual meeting, currently in progress here, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Ahad Khan Cheema said his country “greatly values and appreciates its longstanding and trusted partnership with the ADB,” and added that his country’s demand for more money and knowledge support from the Bank was crucial “in order for us to stay the course.”
Underscoring the importance of maintaining high standards of institutional integrity, Cheema agreed that multilateral development banks (MDBs) must process development projects for any country “strictly on merit and in the most objective, balanced, transparent and apolitical manner”.
The News has learnt that Cheema was supposed to travel to Milan for the meeting but stayed back due to work commitments. The minister claimed that by working in coordination with its development partners including the IMF and the ADB, the country had reached a “pivotal moment of economic recovery with stabilised fundamentals, restored confidence, and reignited growth.”
The minister who sits on the ADB’s board of governors for Pakistan listed a series of steps undertaken to combat the ‘inherited’ set of economic challenges – from contracting gross domestic product to depleting reserves. He went on to share the PMLN government’s “wide-ranging structural reforms programme” to achieve sustainable macroeconomic stability.
“This economic turnaround, achieved in a short span of time, is manifested by improved fiscal balance, current account surplus, a historic reduction in inflation, stable currency, record-high remittances, substantial increase in foreign exchange reserves, foreign direct investment and information technology exports, and upgraded credit rating.
Cheema said the current meeting was taking place at a ‘critical juncture’ when Asian economies, despite showing signs of recovery and steady growth over the past year, were still facing the evolving trade uncertainties, policy shifts, and geopolitical tensions. He said due to above-listed factors, achieving pre-2020 growth levels still remained an elusive goal. “Fragile economies continue to grapple with daunting levels of debt servicing, shrinking trade possibilities, costly climate events and persistent poverty levels.”
The minister was frank in admitting that Pakistan was no exception to these challenges and requested the Bank to increase its support for the country’s private sector. “The private sector is the primary engine of growth owing to its ingenuity, innovation, innate orientation for efficiency, limitless capacity for employment creation and boosting exports. We expect the ADB to step up its support to Pakistan’s private sector by enhancing the footprint of its private sector operations in Pakistan through a dedicated country office and gradually bring it on a par with the structure and operational scope of the International Finance Corporation.”
The minister informed the meeting that the strength of dedicated international experts in the Pakistan Resident Mission (PRM) was not commensurate with the size and scale of the ADB’s portfolio in Pakistan, especially for the largest sectors of Energy and Transport and said it “creates operational challenges”. Cheema urged the ADB to appoint a sufficient number of international experts at the PRM to enhance its support to critical sectors. He also requested the bank to continue and strengthen policy-based support to Pakistan to complement Pakistan’s reforms in key sectors of economy. “While we appreciate provision of the Partial Credit Guarantees (PCGs) alongside the conventional policy support, I would request the ADB to align the design and terms of PCGs with that of the World Bank to ensure that the lending headroom is tapped to the extent of 25 per cent of the guarantee amount.”
