ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Economic Affairs Division (EAD) on Monday denied the government was planning to secure $5 billion from China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
According to local media reports, Pakistan was hoping to seek $3 billion in loan from China and $2 billion from Russia and Kazakhstan.
The reports also claimed an agreement in this regard was expected to be finalized during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to China in this week.
“This is to clarify that no such proposal is under process in the Economic Affairs Division for obtaining $3 billion loan from China and $2 billion loan from Russia & Kazakhstan,” said the EAD statement.
The Pakistani prime minister will visit China on February 3 to attend the opening ceremony of Winter Olympics in Beijing and meet the top Chinese leaders on the sidelines for bilateral talks.
“We have deep strategic and economic relations with China, so every visit is significant,” Pakistan’s information minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain told Arab News on Sunday. “The primary purpose is to join China’s celebrations of Winter Olympics and the New Year.”
Pakistan and China share strong friendly and economic ties, spearheaded by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has seen Beijing pledge over $60 billion for infrastructure projects in Pakistan, central to China’s wider Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to develop land and sea trade routes in Asia and beyond.
Last week, the Pakistani prime minister said in an opinion piece published in China’s Global Times that “for us in Pakistan, relations with China are the cornerstone of our foreign policy enjoying support across the political spectrum.”
PM Khan said that Pakistan was one of the earliest participants of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“As the flagship project of the BRI, CPEC has immense economic and strategic significance for our two countries. There is complete consensus in Pakistan on CPEC’s indispensability for Pakistan’s national development,” he said, adding: “My government is fully committed to making CPEC a High Quality Demonstration Project of BRI.”