Daily Times

Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif says bilateral relations and economic partnership between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are getting stronger and deeper.

In a statement issued on the conclusion of his visit to Saudi Arabia, PM Shehbaz Sharif said a business delegation from the Kingdom will soon visit Pakistan. He said the visit of Saudi business leaders will further expedite economic partnership between the two countries.

The Prime Minister expressed the resolve to work hard to materialize the understanding reached at the leadership level. Shehbaz Sharif said the economic partnership between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia has started new era of bilateral relations between the brotherly relations of the two countries.

Terming his three-day visit to Saudi Arabia as historic, Shehbaz Sharif said exchange of two high-level delegations took place in last two months.

Headhunting firms

In a move aimed at decentralising power and promoting efficiency, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has abolished his authority to hire professional search firms, instead delegating this power to ministers, advisors, and ministers of state.

According to sources, this move will enable ministries and divisions to independently hire headhunting firms to appoint experts and professionals, subject to the approval of the concerned minister, advisor, or minister of state.

PM satisfied with IMF tranche

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday, expressing satisfaction over the disbursement of $1.1 billion final tranche by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hoped that it would help bring economic stability to the country.

The prime minister, in a statement, said that in 2016, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Quaid Nawaz Sharif had completed the IMF program in his tenure, and the current one was the second SBA nearing completion.

Highlighting the significance of the IMF program to save Pakistan from economic default, Prime Minister Shehbaz said that the bitter and tough decisions were coming to fruition in the form of economic stability.

“Allah has given us the opportunity to improve the economy. We will make all possible efforts to bring in the economic stability. The real success is not to get loans but to get rid of them,” he remarked.

He said the time of riddance from the loans and economic prosperity would arrive soon if the efforts in the right direction continued with the same passion.

Pakistan, Malaysia

Pakistan and Malaysia on Tuesday reiterated their commitment to strengthen bilateral ties and strategic partnership through enhanced cooperation in trade, defense, tourism and other sectors. Following their meeting on the sidelines of the Special Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh, both Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his Malaysian counterpart Anwar Ibrahim engaged in a conversation on social media platform X, with both agreeing to build on their discussion.

“As we agreed during our meeting, there is a huge untapped potential to scale up the cooperation in the different sectors of the economy. Our current level of bilateral trade relations doesn’t match the excellent ties between our two brotherly countries,” Prime Minister Shehbaz wrote in response to his Malaysian counterpart’s post.

Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim said that in their meeting, they had expressed their commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation and strategic partnership, including enhancing trade relations which currently stood at US$1.4 billion.