ISLAMABAD:Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday announced that Pakistan had received a $2 billion from Saudi Arabia – a major development given that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was pressing hard to fulfil the requirement of external financing to bridge the current financial year’s requirements. In a tweet, Dar said the amount had been deposited with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), resulting in an increase in foreign reserves which would be reflected in the figures for the week ending July 14.
He thanked the Saudi leadership on behalf of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir and the people of Pakistan for “their great gesture and support”. Earlier in the day, the prime minister said the government had aimed at fetching billions of dollars in investment from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries into the country’s food and agriculture sectors.
He said in a tweet that the GCC countries imported food items and agriculture products to the tune of $40 billion annually. Shehbaz said the step would be taken under the supervision of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), for which the ground has been prepared. In the next four to five years, he said, there would be an investment of approximately $40 billion in addition to the creation of four million new jobs.
The prime minister mentioned that at the national seminar on agriculture and food security held Monday, he stressed the importance of revitalizing agriculture as a harbinger of the second Green Revolution. “The second Green Revolution is about making agriculture the major driver of our economic growth, leading to food security that reinforces our national security,” he said.
He said the seminar was not a routine event meant for churning of rhetoric, but it represented the beginning of a long overdue national effort for the economic revival of the country owned by all stakeholders. “The future holds the promise of departing from loans to building a resilient economy, which stands on its internal strengths,” he said.
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