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Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit three "friendly countries" – Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and China – where he will likely seek financial assistance of up to $ 13 billion for his government in the short money, reported Monday a press article.
Citing sources, Dawn According to a newspaper, Khan will travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday for a two-day visit to Malaysia on October 28 and to China in early November 3.
In the next two weeks, Khan will visit three "friendly countries" where he is likely to seek monetary assistance, the report said a few days after Islamabad had formally requested a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
A cabinet member Khan said that the prime minister was likely to address the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries, as Pakistan badly needed help to mitigate the current economic crisis.
Image of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's file. AP
He added that the government needed $ 12 billion to $ 13 billion immediately to alleviate the financial crisis and reduce external debt.
"We need $ 8 billion to pay off the external debt and $ 5 billion to handle government business," the minister said.
"If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries, we may not need the support of the IMF," he added.
Pakistan officially contacted the IMF on October 12 for a bailout to overcome the economic crisis.
However, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and the United States on Pakistan's bailout plan demand absolute transparency on the country's debts, including those held by China under the corridor project Sino-Pakistani Economic Community (CPEC), thwarted Islamabad.
Pakistan's Finance Minister Asad Umar said last week that the government did not want to rely entirely on the IMF. He said the loan program with the IMF is almost definitive, but the government will have to ensure that the IMF does not create any "impossible conditions" for Pakistan.
According to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Khan will travel to Riyadh at the special invitation of King Salman bin Abdel Aziz to attend the conference on the investment initiatives of tomorrow to be held in this city. Tuesday to Thursday.
It is interesting to note that some countries are boycotting the conference in response to the assassination of a dissident Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
The minister said the prime minister will travel to Malaysia for two days (28-29 October) and meet with his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, as well as other government officials, the report said.
In his recent phone conversation with Mahathir, Khan had expressed his desire to learn from Malaysia's experiences.
Khan will pay an official visit to China on Nov. 3, during which there will be in-depth discussions on Pakistan's strategic ties with China, the report said.
During his meetings in the friendly country, Mr. Khan would inform Chinese leaders that his government wanted to bring about a significant change in projects under the jurisdiction of the CPEC, said the same sources.
Under the previous government, the focus was on infrastructure projects, but the current government wanted projects in the fields of agriculture, job creation and foreign investment occupy a central place, the report said.
The $ 60-billion CPEC is the flagship initiative of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a Chinese President Xi Jinping's favorite project to boost Beijing's influence on the planet through infrastructure financed by China.
The cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced its intention to reduce the railway project between Karachi and Peshawar, the largest of the CPEC, by about $ 2 billion, to reduce the debt burden.
The Trump administration criticized the BIS in China, saying it had indebted some developing countries with debts that they could not afford to pay back.
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