On Friday, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif met with Islamic Development Bank (IDB) President Dr. Muhammad Al Jasser on the margins of the Paris summit for a New Global Financial Pact.
After the meeting, the IDB president escorted Prime Minister Shehbaz out of the room while holding his hand.
Al Jasser confessed his affection for Pakistani mangoes, which the Prime Minister promised to send as a gift.
The prime minister also extended IDB’s president an invitation to visit Pakistan at his earliest discretion.
According to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office, the two discussed Pakistan and IDB’s longstanding cooperation and engagement during the meeting.
In addition, they assessed the progress of ongoing initiatives and discussed new avenues for collaboration.
PM Shehbaz also thanked Dr. Al Jasser on behalf of the government and people of Pakistan for IDB’s participation in the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan, conducted on January 9, 2023 in Geneva.
He lauded the bank for its commitment to provide $4.2 billion to support Pakistan’s post-flood recovery and acknowledged Dr. Al Jasser’s personal contribution and leadership role in mobilizing such a massive amount of financial assistance.
PM Shehbaz also emphasized that the IDB’s beneficial partnership with Pakistan will go a long way in assisting the people of Pakistan to reconstruct their lives and livelihoods, as well as supporting the government’s sustainable development goals.
During the meeting, the IDB President was also briefed on the recently established Special Investment Facilitation Council, which aims to expedite foreign investments in the country and provide a single point of contact for all foreign investors’ concerns.
Notably, the Prime Minister is in Paris at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron to attend the New Global Financing Pact Summit on June 22 and 23.
At the summit, Prime Minister Shehbaz urged the international community to devise a plan for the fair, equitable, and prudent distribution of resources in order to ensure lasting peace and harmony throughout the globe.
Despite the fact that France, the conference’s host nation, billed the event as a consensus-building exercise, leaders are under pressure to produce concrete outcomes from the two-day meeting as economies stutter under the weight of growing debt following a series of crises in recent years.
The summit comes at a time when the magnitude of the financial challenges ahead is becoming increasingly apparent, with warnings that the world’s ability to limit global warming to tolerable levels depends on a massive increase in renewable energy investment in developing nations.
On the first day of the summit, Thursday, IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva announced that a pledge to transfer $100 billion of liquidity-boosting “special drawing rights” to a climate and poverty fund had been fulfilled.
Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank, stated that the institution would implement a “pause” mechanism on debt repayments for crisis-stricken nations so they could “focus on what matters” and “stop worrying about the bill that is coming”
Separately, a group of wealthy nations and multilateral development banks promised Senegal $2.7 billion to assist the west African nation reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
And Zambia, which defaulted on its debt following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, received some financial respite when its primary creditor China and other creditors agreed to restructure $6.3 billion in loans.
On Twitter, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema referred to it as a “important milestone on our path to economic recovery and growth.”
