ISLAMABAD: Two Hajj flights, one from Lahore and one from Islamabad, departed for Saudi Arabia on Thursday morning, a day after a Saudi delegation from Riyadh visited Islamabad International Airport to review arrangements for the annual pilgrimage.
“It’s the first time Road to Makkah project has been introduced in Pakistan. It’s a gift from King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to help and assist our (Pakistani) brothers and Hajj pilgrims from Pakistan,” Nawaf bin Said Al-Malki, who is Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Pakistan, told Arab News on Wednesday after reviewing Hajj arrangements with the Saudi delegation.
He said the Hajj quota for Pakistanis, enhanced to 200,000 by the Saudi government in April, could be further increased.
On Friday, Prime Minister Imran Khan is scheduled to formally inaugurate the Road to Makkah project in Pakistan, the PM’s adviser Arbab Shehzad said.
A team of 64 Saudi officials arrived in Islamabad on Sunday and installed an immigration system at the Islamabad International Airport to facilitate Pakistani pilgrims flying to Makkah and Madinah for Hajj this year. The immigration facility, staffed by Saudi officers, has been set up separately from regular immigration counters and is expected to be introduced in other airports of the country also.
Figures from Pakistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs show over 21,000 Hajj pilgrims will avail the facility during this Hajj season. Also, once Pakistani Hajj pilgrims arrive in Saudi Arabia, they will no longer face long immigration lines or have to lug travel bags, which Saudi officials said would be delivered straight to their points of stay.
Road to Makkah project paves way for seamless Hajj operations in Pakistan
Road to Makkah project paves way for seamless Hajj operations in Pakistan
- Initiative is ‘gift from King Salman and Crown Prince,’ Saudi envoy Al-Malki says
- 64-member Saudi team installs new immigration system to facilitate pilgrims flying from Islamabad
Rating firm S&P says it won’t rush Iran war downgrades, sees risks for countries like Pakistan
- Agency says it is monitoring indebted energy importers as higher oil prices strain finances
- Gulf economies seen better placed to weather shock, though Bahrain flagged as vulnerable
LONDON: S&P Global said it would not make any knee-jerk sovereign rating cuts following the outbreak of war in the Middle East, but warned on Thursday that soaring oil and gas prices were putting a number of already cash-strapped countries at risk.
The firm’s top analysts said in a webinar that the conflict, which has involved US and Israeli strikes against Iran and Iranian strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states, was now moving from a low- to moderate-risk scenario.
Most Gulf countries had enough fiscal buffers, however, to weather the crisis for a while, with more lowly rated Bahrain the only clear exception.
Qatar’s banking sector could also struggle if there were significant deposit outflows in reaction to the conflict, although there was no evidence of such strains at the moment, they said.
“We don’t want to jump the gun and just say things are bad,” S&P’s head global sovereign analyst, Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, said.
The longer the crisis was prolonged, though, “the more difficult it is going to be,” he added.
Sifon-Arevalo said Asia was the second-most exposed region, due to many of its countries being significant Gulf oil and gas importers.
India, Thailand and Indonesia have relatively lower reserves of oil, while the region also had already heavily indebted countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka whose finances would be further hurt by rising energy prices.
“We are closely monitoring these (countries) to see how the credit stories evolve,” Sifon-Arevalo said.
