ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jillani said on Thursday Pakistan would sign a “number of MOUs and agreements” with representatives of GCC countries who were set to visit Pakistan this month.
In June, Pakistan set up a Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) — a civil-military hybrid forum — to attract foreign funding, particularly from GCC nations, in agriculture, mining, information technology, defense production and energy as the South Asian country deals with a balance of payments crisis and requires billions of dollars in foreign exchange to finance its trade deficit and repay its international debts in the current financial year.
Earlier this month, caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said Saudi Arabia and the UAE would invest up to $25 billion each in Pakistan over the next five years in the mining, agriculture and IT sectors.
“We are expecting representatives of GCC countries to visit Pakistan within this month, from Saudi Arabia, from UAE, from other countries and a number of MOUs and agreements are likely to be signed with GCC countries,” Jillani said in an interview to TRT, without divulging details of the deals.
“It’s certainly going to be a great partnership between Pakistan and GCC countries.”
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, during an interview with Turkish news organization, TRT world, in New York, USA on September 21, 2023. (Photo courtesy: @PakistanUN_NY/X)
He said Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and other GCC nations were “great partners of Pakistan.”
“There are several layers of this cooperation, economic, people to people contacts, defense, we have very strong political cooperation with members of the GCC countries,” the foreign minister said.
He said the SIFC would focus on five major areas, namely agriculture, IT, mines, minerals and energy.
“As a matter of fact, we have already received expressions of interest from GCC countries about investment in energy and mines and minerals,” Jillani added.
Pakistan is embarking on a tricky path to economic recovery under a caretaker government after a $3 billion loan program, approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in July, averted a sovereign debt default.
Last month Barrick Gold Corp. said it was open to bringing in Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund as one of its partners in Pakistan’s Reko Diq gold and copper mine.
Barrick considers the Reko Diq mine one of the world’s largest underdeveloped copper-gold areas and it owns a 50 percent stake, with the remaining 50 percent owned by the governments of Pakistan and the province of Balochistan.
Pakistan’s untapped mineral deposits are conservatively valued at about $6 trillion, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said earlier this month.
