The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is scheduling to give nearby $10 billion in fresh assistance to Pakistan for the next five years to several growth missions like urban facilities, disaster risk reduction, and policy-based programmes.
In line with the news report, ADB Director General for Central and West Asia Eugenue Zukhov had a meeting with Minister for Economic Affairs Omar Ayub on Tuesday, in which the decision was made. “Additional financing of $700 million is currently available to Pakistan to procure Covid-19 vaccines under the ADB’s APVAX facility,” he said.
He cherished Pakistan’s government for the support to fruitfully relinquish the ADB personnel working in Afghanistan.
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Zhukov also highlighted the commitment of ADB to support Pakistan’s reform agenda and increase the financial recovery process during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moreover, Ayub said that urban services were the foremost priority for the government given the fast urbanization and population growth in Pakistan.
He repeated the government’s pledge to increase urban infrastructure and services like sanitation, water, and public transport.
While mentioning the statistics, he informed that the ADB was sponsoring 32 development projects valued at $6.4 billion in varied areas like energy, agriculture and irrigation, road and transport, urban services, healthcare, education, and social protection.
“Through the National Coordination Committee on Foreign-Funded Projects, the Economic Affairs Division has improved the performance of ongoing projects by removing major bottlenecks such as delay in land acquisition and right of way (RoW) issues,” he said.
“The department has also undertaken an internal exercise to weed out non-performing projects in a bid to redirect resources towards more sustainable schemes.”
Furthermore, the minister showed his confidence that the government would maximize struggles to increase project management and oversight by developing a committed monitoring cell at the Economic Affairs Division.
The minister while admiring the ADB’s continued support to Pakistan, told Zukhov that the government was dedicated to completing structural reforms in different fields of the economy including capital markets, energy, trade competitiveness, domestic resource mobilization, and governance.
He also appreciated the assistance of ADB for the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines.
