Pakistan will ask int’l lenders for billions of dollars worth of new loans to rebuild the country after calamitous floods: PM Shehbaz
ISLAMABAD, Oct 19 (SABAH): Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif has said that Pakistan will ask international lenders for billions of dollars worth of new loans to rebuild the country after calamitous floods uprooted 33 million people and pushed its cash-strapped economy even closer to insolvency.
In an interview with British daily newspaper “Financial Times”, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad was not trying to reschedule its external debt, worth about $130bn, but it did need “huge sums of money” for “mega undertakings” such as rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure damaged or washed away in a deluge scientists have linked to climate change.
“We are not asking for any kind of measure [such as] a rescheduling or a moratorium,” Shehbaz Sharif told the “Financial Times”. “We are asking for additional funds.”
“There is a gap — and a very serious gap — which is widening by the day between our demands and what we have received,” Shehbaz Sharif.
The prime minister also hinted that the failure of the international community to rally resources risked fuelling political instability in the nuclear-armed state.
“We are obviously concerned because if there is dissatisfaction leading to deeper political instability and we are not able to achieve our basic requirements and goals, this can obviously lead to serious problems,” Shehbaz Sharif said. “I’m not saying it in terms of any kind of threat, but I’m saying there’s a real possibility.”
French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to host a donors’ conference to boost Pakistan’s fundraising efforts. No date has been set for the conference but Shehbaz Sharif said he expected it to take place in Paris in November. The UN is finalising its own assessment of the amount Pakistan will need to rebuild after the floods.
Last month the UN Development Programme suggested Pakistan suspend debt repayments and seek to restructure its loans because of a “climate change-induced crisis”.
The devastation has also prompted environmental activists to call for “climate reparations” that would be paid by richer countries with higher emissions to lower-emitting nations suffering the brunt of climate change.
However, Shehbaz Sharif said: “We are only asking for climate justice, we are not using the word ‘reparations’ at all.”
The prime minister said Pakistan had been tapping state coffers to help displaced families and buy provisions such as tents, medicine, food packs and drinkable water.
Islamabad has been making its case for emergency aid on the international stage, including at the UN General Assembly and last week’s Central Asia-Russia summit held in Astana, Kazakhstan. Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistan would also “seek additional funding from wherever we can”. “We are in a war against climate change-induced havoc, and we have become a victim,” Shehbaz Sharif said. “Tomorrow another country can and we don’t want that to happen.”