Daily Times

In a befitting reply to Washington, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader and likely finance minister in the upcoming federal government Asad Umar has asked the US to focus on its own Chinese debt instead of what’s going on in Pakistan.

“One friendly advice to the Americans: we’ll worry about our Chinese debt, but I think they better handle their own Chinese debt first,” he told Bloomberg in an interview. “We have a serious external debt problem … I’m not saying we don’t. However, we don’t have a Chinese debt problem,” he added.

Asad Umar said he would bring more transparency to the over $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) infrastructure projects in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s economy may need more than $12 billion to overcome the financial crisis and a decision on where to source the funds from is to be made by the incoming PTI government.”The decision needs to be taken in the next six weeks … the further you go forward the more difficult, the more expensive the options become,” Umar said. Pakistan could turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as friendly countries and issue diaspora bonds to bolster the country’s depleting reserves, he said.

Pakistan’s deteriorating finances is a key challenge for new leader Imran Khan, who is working to form a coalition government after winning the most seats in recently held general election.

Umar said his party would not attempt to privatise Pakistan’s bloated and loss-making state companies such as Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM). He said within the first 100 days of the new administration, the state-owned firms will be shifted into a wealth fund similar to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings to remove them from political interference.

Published in Daily Times, August 5^th 2018.