Daily Times

Sir: Federal Minister for Interior, Planning, Development and Reforms Professor Ahsan Iqbal has quite rightly pointed out that any move to Pakistan in the ‘grey’ list by the international community obviously at the behest of Trump administration of the USA will be counter-productive and undermine the extensive work that Pakistan has carried out carried out under the National Action Plan during the last few years.

He has highlighted the role and sacrifices of Pakistan in the fight against terrorism during his substantive and fruitful discussion with his Norwegian counterpart Sylvia Listaug in Norway and also sought her country’s support at the upcoming meeting of the Financial Action Task Force scheduled to be held in Paris, France, soon.

According to the reports in the media, the federal minister reiterated Pakistan has become one of the top five economies in the world which have shown the highest growth rate during last five years sounding a warning in simple words that labeling Pakistan as such will be stepping on the wrong foot as this will halt the ongoing pace of accelerated progress and development in the country pushing it back many years.

During his inter-action with Pakistanis and Norwegians in Norway also the visiting Pakistani minister highlighting country’s enormous economic drive onwards said that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a great game changer as more than 46 billion dollars worth projects are being implemented in different corners of the country out of which investments worth 29 billion dollars has already been materialised, electricity load-shedding has been considerably overcome with the substantial increase of 11000 megawatt of power addition during last four years and there has been improvements in different sectors in Sindh as well as in Balochistan provinces.

MUHAMMAD MURTAZA ZEESHAN

Lahore

Published in Daily Times, February 21^st 2018.