International donors pledge over $10 billion dollars for flood relief in Pakistan

Islamabad: A host of nations and international financial bodies have pledged to give over $10 billion to cash strapped Pakistan most of which will be in the form of project loans to be rolled out over the next three years.

The plegdes were made at a donors’ conference in Geneva earlier this week. According to Pakistan’s Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, around $8.7 billion out of the total of over $10 billion will be in the form of project loans intended to help the millions of flood-hit people in the troubled country.

Apart from around 40 nations such as France, China, US and Saudi Arabia, the pledges also included commitments from several international financial bodies including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.

“I am not incorporating the pledge made by the Saudi Development Bank on purpose here because it is not clear whether their announcement of $1bn pertains to programme lending or project loan,” Dar told the media.

“The faster we can design and create feasibilities and impress them, the faster these pledges will materialise,” he added.

Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif was also present at the donors’ conference.

“The total amount of pledges that Pakistan has been able to achieve far exceeds what we had asked for. This is a huge success for Pakistan in every sense of the word,” he was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.

Shahbaz Sharif said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres fought for the flood victims “like a Pakistani” during a recent fundraising conference in Geneva.

At a news conference in Islamabad, Sharif pledged transparency when the money is spent, and added that the government would try to prevent a repeat of last summer’s deluge. At one point, one-third of the impoverished country was under water, a “doomsday before the doomsday” of Earth’s changing climate.

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