PM Shehbaz vows to rid country of loans, put on track of self-sustainability

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday said that the government had established a robust mechanism in the form of the Special Investment Facilitation Council to attract investments, ARY News reported.

Addressing the participants of the third meeting of the International Partners Support Group (IPSG), the prime minister said the government had chalked out an economic revival plan. Its implementation would require foreign investment and technical support from friendly countries to enhance the per acre yield of wheat, sugarcane, and other commodities and focus on other areas of action.

He thanked the member countries and organizations for supporting Pakistan amidst the difficult time of unprecedented floods and told them the people still awaited return to their homes as they lacked funding to rebuild the destroyed houses. This shows the severity of the challenge which required untiring efforts by the government, friendly countries, and international partners to help Pakistan build climate-resilient infrastructure.

The prime minister thanked and appreciated the federal ministers for planning, climate change, finance, economic affairs, and foreign affairs and their teams for reaching out to the international community and organizing Geneva Conference and where international commitments were made.

He told the participants that the country had been facing economic challenges like international inflation in terms of crude oil and commodities prices.

He said as the government had reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it would strictly abide by it without any deviation.

He said his government’s term was about to end by the next month, the upcoming interim government would also surely be adhering to the IMF deal as the first tranche had already been received.

He thanked the friendly countries and IMF Managing Director for helping Pakistan to reach the $ 3 billion agreement for nine months.

He said the SIFC would focus on the promotion of the agriculture sector and the introduction of value-added products which would require an infrastructure to be built from the investment from Gulf nations, America, North America, or any other country desiring to invest.