logo
China, KSA, UAE briefed about economy

China, KSA, UAE briefed about economy

WASHINGTON: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb has met with the UAE Minister of State for Financial Affairs Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed Aljadaan and Finance Minister of China Lan Fo'an in Washington DC on the sidelines of IMF-World Bank Spring meetings.
Aurangzeb during a meeting with President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Jin Liqun discussed banks financing for ongoing and future development projects in Pakistan and expressed the government's desire to proceed with the inaugural issuance of Panda Bond within the current calendar year.
According to press release issued by finance ministry on Thursday, the meeting was held on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.
Aurangzeb highlights Panda, ESG bonds in key meetings at Washington: Finance Division
Aurangzeb thanked the AIIB for its longstanding support for Pakistan's socio-economic development. He also conveyed Pakistan's keenness to sustain the current momentum of engagement with the Bank. Meanwhile, during a meeting with, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, United Arab Emirates, Mohamed Bin Hadi Al Hussaini, the minister briefed him on Pakistan's economic indicators, the recent sovereign rating upgrade by Fitch, and the privatization agenda of the government.
He informed that a Staff-Level Agreement (SLA) had been reached on the first review under Pakistan's Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and a new arrangement under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
He appreciated the investment appetite of UAE investors at both G2G and B2B levels and emphasized the importance of translating MoUs into concrete agreements. He also expressed interest in learning from the UAE's experience in regulating cryptocurrency.
The Minister extended an invitation to HE Mohamed Bin Hadi Al Hussaini to visit Pakistan.
In a meeting with Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed Aljadaan, Aurangzeb thanked him for Saudi Arabia's longstanding and strong support to Pakistan in its pursuit of economic development, including through support for the IMF programme.
He welcomed Saudi investments in Pakistan and reaffirmed the government's resolve to stay the course on reforms. He also extended an invitation to Aljadaan to visit Pakistan.
During a meeting with Finance Minister of China Lan Fo'an, the minister recalled their last meeting held in Beijing in July 2024 and thanked the government of China for its unwavering support for Pakistan's socio-economic development and for its strong backing of Pakistan's economic reform programme supported by the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of the IMF.
He briefed the Chinese side on the key reforms being undertaken in the areas of taxation, energy, privatization, public finance, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The Minister also provided an update on the status of the Panda Bond and requested the support of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to fast-track the issuance process.
He extending a cordial invitation to the Chinese Finance Minister to visit Pakistan, the press release added.
Likewise, in a meeting with President Global Policy and Advocacy of the Gates Foundation, Gargee Gosh, the finance minister appreciated the Gates Foundation's continued support for Pakistan's polio eradication efforts, maternal and child health and nutrition initiatives, family planning services, and vaccine delivery and immunization programs.
He lauded the Foundation's collaboration with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in introducing tax system digitalization to transform it into a digital tax administration. The discussions also included the integration of Buna and Raast payment platforms to promote seamless regional payments.
The minister requested the Foundation to continue its support for Pakistan's polio eradication initiative and extended an invitation for participation in the upcoming awareness event on May 7, 2025, for the launch of Pakistan's national hepatitis C elimination programme.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Poverty spike
Poverty spike

Express Tribune

time2 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

Poverty spike

Listen to article The World Bank's recalibration of global poverty lines has cast a harsh spotlight on Pakistan, estimating that 44.7% of the population, or over 107 million people, live below the lower-middle-income threshold of $4.20/day. Extreme poverty has surged to 16.5% under the revised $3/day line. While blind nationalists may deflect by blaming the worsening statistic on updated benchmarks and revised global calculations, the truth is that the numbers are actually an understatement. The 44.7% figure relies on outdated survey data from 2018-19, before the catastrophic impact of events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, record inflation and economic disarray for the past few years and the 2022 super-floods that submerged a third of the country and displaced millions. You need not be an economist to recognise that, in light of these events, the actual current poverty rate based on the World Bank's metrics is much higher. And even this outdated data tells a story that is relevant today. The restive province of Balochistan, for example, had a poverty rate of almost 70%. Pakistan has also been one of the world's worst performers in combating poverty. India managed to shrink its extreme poverty rate from over 16% in 2012-2013 to under 6% in 2022-2023, despite the increase in the nominal dollar value. Pakistan, on the other hand, saw at least 27 million more people falling under the poverty line. The first step to addressing the problem is getting more reliable data, so that the picture, no matter how brutal, is more accurate. The next step is transformative action, rather than theatrics and name-calling to divert blame for a national failure onto any one party. One of the best ways to address extreme poverty is by strengthening social services, including through cash transfers via BISP, and bolstering human capital via investment in health, nutrition and education. Tax policy reforms are also critical because a social safety net is pointless if it is financed through indirect taxes that squeeze the working poor, rather than the millionaires and billionaires who don't pay their fair share.

Twilight of the Empire
Twilight of the Empire

Express Tribune

time5 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

Twilight of the Empire

US President Donald Trump gestures, as he departs for Pennsylvania, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, U.S., May 30, 2025. Photo: Reuters Listen to article As a series of trends and shocks cumulatively strain the old order, US President Donald Trump, even his critics must admit, possesses the fatal gift of locating the aching pulse of the nation, only to inflame it further with self-destructive measures while eroding Washington's global credibility. He sees the symptoms of American decline clearly: deindustrialisation, a brittle middle class, bloated trade deficits, and the political cost of endless wars. But he metabolises crisis into spectacle, grievance into doctrine, and interdependence into betrayal. For decades, the US has functioned as the imperial core of a global capital-recycling apparatus. The system has depended on the continuous inflow of surplus capital from export-heavy economies, including China and Germany, to America's debt-saturated financial architecture. The US trade deficit reached an eye-watering $1.1 trillion in 2023, a figure that dwarfs those of other peripheral or semi-peripheral economies like India. In this light, Trump's populist howl against the 'indignity' of the American people, dispossessed in the very belly of global wealth, is not entirely misplaced. His instinct that endless wars serve as spectacles to obscure the real mechanism of American hegemony – the global dollar-debt regime – is accurate in a crude, pre-theoretical sense. Since the late 1960s, when America ceased being a surplus nation, its geopolitical muscle has rested not on production but on its control of the dollar as the global reserve currency. The military-industrial complex is merely the theatrical wing of a deeper financial imperialism. However, Trump is radically mistaken in his belief that punitive tariffs and protectionist swagger will resurrect 'Middle America.' Tariffs, in the late neoliberal stage, cannot revive industrial capacity gutted by decades of offshoring and rentier capitalism. Instead, they risk destabilising the very mechanism whereby America's status as a debtor empire is transformed into an asset: the recycling of dollar-denominated debt into US capital markets. If that circuit is broken, the paper wealth of Wall Street and the speculative empires of Trump's own class will collapse. To materially uplift the working and lower-middle classes that fuelled his electoral resurgence, Trump would have to declare war not on China or Brussels, but on Manhattan and Malibu, hedge funds, private equity, and speculative real estate. 'Asymmetric interdependence' For much of the post-World War II period, what was marketed as 'globalisation' was, in fact, an imperial project cloaked in liberal universals. It was the projection of American state-capitalist hegemony through a scaffold of multilateral institutions – the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO – and the sacrosanct status of the dollar as the planetary currency-signifier. These were not neutral frameworks but instruments of asymmetric interdependence: the United States exported capital, debt, and ideology, while importing dependence, discipline, and surplus labour from the periphery and semi-periphery. The so-called "Washington Consensus" was never a consensus but a diktat. The system also functioned through a deeper ideological fantasy that free markets and global rule-based order were apolitical, universal, and benign. However, even most liberal-internationalist critiques warn the fantasy is fraying. The very interdependence that sustained US primacy is in retreat. Firms and governments worldwide need American consumers, capital markets, and alliances, giving Washington soft coercive power. Trump's tactics have upended that balance. By 'assailing interdependence,' the administration is chipping away at the very basis of American advantage. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye argue that order depends on stable power balances, shared norms, and sustaining institutions. Trump has shaken all three. What follows is a deeper drift into disorder, one that won't resolve until Washington either reorients itself or is overtaken by a new dispensation. The plunge may already be underway. 'In his erratic and misguided effort to make the United States even more powerful, Trump may bring its period of dominance—what the American publisher Henry Luce first called 'the American century'—to an unceremonious end,' they write in a Foreign Affairs essay. The weaponisation of the global economy hollows out the very symbolic order the US once used to legitimate its rule. By shrinking its adversaries' strategic space, Washington also corrodes the interconnected lattice that once lent credibility and allure to its empire. A tariff here, a blacklist there, and the freezing of foreign bank reserves – each may win tactical advantage, but at the cost of eroding the trust that underpinned the liberal international order. After all, what merchant or government would dare anchor long-term plans to a system where every node can be severed by a presidential signature? Trump's disruption is risky for the US precisely because new economic blocs are emerging from the wreckage of Western hegemony. Many leaders of the Global South remember colonialism and feel the 21st century liberates them from Western diktats. Where the US once posed as the sole path to progress, China's tech power and Russia's security reach now appear less like threats and more like counterweights. On soft power's front, when natural disasters strike or epidemics spread, Western-style NGOs and media have lost some of their framing power, as Chinese and Russian aid convoys now appear on television alongside those from the Red Cross. The velvet-glove diplomacy of the Cold War years – teddy bears over bombers – has been largely replaced by quarantine diplomacy, vaccine pledges, and once-dominant American development agencies playing second fiddle to Belt-and-Road contracts. In May, a major Democracy Perception Index reported that majorities of people worldwide now see the US negatively. The pollster noted that after Trump's return to the White House, America's reputation 'took a particularly massive hit in EU countries' and fell sharply everywhere. Even NATO founder Anders Fogh Rasmussen sighed that the US' standing was 'unloved' across most of the world. By contrast, China's image is improving globally, even overtaking the US in overall favourability in most regions. At home, the US is cannibalising its future. Budget cuts to core research agencies like the NSF and NIH are hollowing out the very ecosystem that once drove American innovation. Labs shrink, fellowships vanish, and global talent turns to Beijing, Singapore, or the UAE – where funding flows and visas follow. Meanwhile, China invests aggressively in semiconductors, AI, and green tech, eroding the US edge. As Oxford's Carl Benedikt Frey puts it, Trump's agenda risks dismantling the pillars of US innovation. Technological leadership is not a birthright but is built. And Washington is letting it rot. Trump's move to turn tariff-penalties and export bans into blunt instruments has worried many that he was abandoning existing rules and undermining the soft power that Washington has spent decades building. Analysts argue that American power rests on a blend of hard force and attraction, even though this very soft power has enabled hard power interventions. Interdependence with trading partners and multilateral institutions generates US leverage, while global admiration for 'American culture and ideals' makes allies pliant, they argue. Trump's assault on trade pacts and international agencies undercuts the foundation of American power and accelerates the erosion of the postwar order. In principle, if American power were absolute, it could force partners into line indefinitely. In practice, aggressive trade measures are sowing resentments. Many countries have been party to US-led trade deals expecting mutual benefit – now they wonder if Washington will simply upend their exports to punish political stances. The WTO and other legal venues, for a long time arenas where small states could begrudge larger ones, are being largely sidelined. Without clear enforcement, the most vulnerable economies will look for alternative blocs or simply bribe each other to stay out of the US orbit. The cruellest irony is that by inflicting pain on others – or threatening to – the US is undermining the very goodwill and partnerships that underpinned its postwar hegemony. The writer is a Lahore-based senior journalist

Pakistan's plan to sharply increase growth faces headwinds, analysts say
Pakistan's plan to sharply increase growth faces headwinds, analysts say

Business Recorder

time11 hours ago

  • Business Recorder

Pakistan's plan to sharply increase growth faces headwinds, analysts say

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is aiming to sharply increase economic growth under its annual federal budget unveiled on Tuesday, but analysts are sceptical about the country's ability to meet its ambitious goals. The budget targets higher revenues and a steep fiscal deficit cut under International Monetary Fund (IMF) backed reforms. Yet, defence spending was hiked 20%, excluding military pensions, after last month's conflict with India. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said in a post-budget press conference on Wednesday that customs duties have been cut or removed on thousands of raw materials and intermediate goods. 'Industry here has to be competitive, competitive enough to export,' he said. But growth drivers remain unclear. The government is targeting 4.2% GDP growth in fiscal 2026, up from 2.7% this year, which was revised down from an initial 3.6% as agriculture and large-scale manufacturing underperformed. 'Pakistan's GDP growth projection of 4.2% appears ambitious given recent performance, and overly optimistic assumptions may place tax targets out of reach,' said Callee Davis, senior economist at Oxford Economics. Key highlights of Pakistan budget for 2025-26 Pakistan's past growth spurts were consumption-led, triggering balance-of-payments crises and IMF bailouts. The government says it now wants higher-quality, investment-driven growth. Aurangzeb said structural reforms are underway, pointing to East Asia-style pro-market transitions. 'This is an East Asia moment for Pakistan,' he said. The 17.57 trillion rupee ($62.24 billion) budget comes as Pakistan remains under a $7 billion IMF programme. Revenues are projected to rise over 14%, driven by new taxes and broadening the tax base. The fiscal deficit is targeted at 3.9% of GDP, down from this year's 5.9%. Income tax calculator for FY 2025-26 Key reforms include taxing agriculture, real estate, and retail, and reviving stalled privatisations. But revenue shortfalls this year have raised doubts, with both agriculture income tax and retail collections missing targets. Only 1.3% of the population paid income tax in 2024, government data shows. 'Pakistan's budget keeps the IMF and investors happy, even if it comes at a near-term cost to growth,' said Hasnain Malik, head of equity strategy at Tellimer. 'The political setup, with the military firmly in charge, also lowers the risk of protests.' While overall spending will fall 7%, defence will rise after the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours in decades. Including pensions, defence spending will total $12 billion, 19% of the federal budget or 2.5% of GDP, matching India's share, per World Bank data. The hike was enabled by a sharp drop in interest payments, as the central bank cut policy rates from 22% to 11% over the past year, easing domestic debt servicing costs. Aurangzeb said cuts in subsidies also helped create fiscal space.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store