ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi urged the international community to consider writing off loans for developing nations, such as Pakistan, to facilitate them in their fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
“I reiterate PM’s (Imran Khan) call for alleviating this financial burden to protect the most vulnerable already struggling to cope with the challenge with limited resources & infrastructure to fight this pandemic (Covid-19),” Qureshi tweeted on Saturday.
He added that PM Khan also “underscored the imp of relieving the burden of debt-ridden developing countries in order to ensure resource allocation for saving lives.”
In an interview with the Associated Press on March 16, PM Khan had said that the virus would devastate the economies of developing countries before warning more prosperous nations to prepare to write off loans of the poorer ones.
“The world community has to think of some sort of a debt write-off for countries like us, which are very vulnerable, at least that will help us in coping with (the coronavirus), ” he said.
Pakistan has seen a sharp increase in coronavirus cases with the total number rising to nearly 700, amid calls for a complete lockdown in the country.
Islamabad has also temporarily suspended all international flights in order to limit the spread of the deadly virus.
