Opposition’s narrative on FATF shameful: Hammad

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar Saturday termed the opposition parties’ narrative on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) shameful and condemnable.

Addressing a news conference, the minister said the world community and FATF acknowledged and recognized the considerable progress and efforts made by Pakistan on an action plan with high-level commitment.

He said the opposition was making political point scoring for its gains adding the national economy was heading in the right direction due to prudent economic policies of the incumbent government. He said FATF has also given a new 7-point action plan.

The new action plan was mainly focused to counter money laundering, which was relatively easy than the terror financing. “We have set a target to meet this in 12 months,” he said.

Azhar said Pakistan was included in FATF grey list during the tenure of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) regime. However, now we were facing this challenge and we would try to address or resolve it. He said the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) government presented a people-friendly budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022 despite the financial crunch. All economic indicators show an upward trend and the industry is also growing fast. On the issue of energy shortage, he said: “We are making alternative arrangements to meet the shortfall of electricity. We will try to fill this gap of load shedding and even if it is needed, it will be minimized so that all this can be done in a better way.” Load shedding occurred due to the down trend of water in the Tarbela Dam, he said and added the rate of furnace oil has come down to the lowest level in the last two and a half years that will be further reduced in the future.