Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has said that Pakistan has got one-year timeframe for the return of loan given by Saudi Arabia but this timeframe might be extended if needs be, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
The finance minister revealed this while giving details of the Saudi loan to the Senate on Friday.
He said that the government took a loan from Saudi Arabia just for one year. |It’s customary to add conditions to the loan agreement, but it’s not necessary that we fully implement them,” he remarked.
He was optimistic that Saudi Arabia might extend the time limit if Pakistan faced some problem.
He also divulged that while giving loan, the Saudi government told Pakistan that it could take back its loan in the event that the country became insolvent and “Pakistan will never become broke”, he added.
While addressing the Senate, Tarin said that those who want Pakistan to remain at FATF grey list are not our ‘friends’,
The finance minister was of the view that the countries which were in favour of keeping Pakistan on the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list could not be its allies.
He said though the country had fulfilled 27 out of 28 conditions but still it was on the international financial watchdog’s grey list. “We are being victimized,” he said adding if it had been some other country, it would have got out of the list since long.
However, the finance minister was hopeful that in next review, the FTAF would remove Pakistan from its grey list.
Senator Mushtaq Ahmad tossed a question to the minister asking him why did the government accept the Saudi loan at four percent interest rate as previously Saudi Arabia used to lend the loan at 2.3 percent interest rate. Tarin tried to pacify him by saying that mark-up rates were rising all over the world.
He said Pakistan requested the Saudi government for the purchase of oil on deferred payment. We have to import coal for the plants which run on imported coal only, he added.
He said in order to run some power plants, we were taking out coal from Thar. If you ask the government to stop importing petrol, it cannot be possible, he added.
On rising imports, the minister said that the import bill soared due to increase in sugar and wheat import. Besides this, we have purchased Covid-19 vaccine doses worth $2 billion, he stated.
Tarin divulged that in last month of January, the government remained successful in bringing down the import bill by $1.5 billion.
He said that the government raised duty on CBUs which pushed the car prices upward.
He said that our exports were risen by 25% to 28%. He held that our rupee was under pressure but now the pressure was deflected and the US dollar plummeted to Rs174. He further revealed that the rupee at this time was not under value, there was just Re1 or Rs2 difference.
The minister told the upper house that Pakistan was using its own oil resources these days. In international market, more than 100% hike in the oil prices was observed but we raised the oil price by 40% only, he exhorted. He said that government was trying to put less burden on its people.