ADB provides $500m financial assistance

KARACHI - The Asian Development Bank is set to provide 500 million dollars to Pakistan today (Tuesday) to support the country to stabilise its foreign exchange reserves and to meet its financial obligations, The Nation learnt on Monday.

The ADB had made a commitment with the government to provide 1.50 billion dollars worth economic support to Pakistan in 2008-09, out of which 500 million dollars were being released on today (Tuesday), sources said. They said the federal government had approached the ADB to get released the amount on urgent basis. The senior government officials had raised this issue with the ADB during recent meeting of the Friends of Pakistan forum, held in New York on Friday that was chaired by President Asif Ali Zardari. As a result, the ADB officials had promised to meet this demand of the Pakistan government urgently, said the officials.

Officials said the World Bank would also provide 1.37 billion dollars to Pakistan in FY09 and the bank is expected to disburse the money according to the schedule.

It is worth noting that in first two months of current fiscal, Pakistan had received a record amount of 712 million dollars, whereas in the corresponding months of last fiscal the country had been provided only 99 million dollars from the donors. Thus in monetary terms, Pakistan had got 613 million dollars more foreign exchange during July and August 2008 as compared to the same months of last fiscal.

Official sources said that the disbursement of the economic assistance would increase further in this fiscal as the Friends of Pakistan have promised to come up with economic support in the next meeting, to be held in Abu Dhabi.

During recent meeting in New York, the Pakistan government had demanded 10 billion dollars economic assistance from the Friends of Pakistan.

The dignitaries who attended the Friends of Pakistan forum meeting included the representatives from United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Turkey, European Union and United Nations. President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari chaired the meeting in New York last week.

In 2007-08 the disbursement of economic assistance to Pakistan amounted to 3.05 billion dollars as against 2.76 billion dollars in 2006-07.

However, in 2008-09 the government is expecting the disbursement of well over 4 billion dollars.