July 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has promised the nation that they will receive urgent aid as soon as the “financial cushion” is activated, which he hopes to achieve after the preliminary agreement reached on Thursday with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reactivate a aid loan valued at 6,000 million euros.
Pakistan and the IMF originally signed the agreement in 2019 but had ended up paralyzed by the international organization’s doubts about the willingness of former Prime Minister Imran Khan to comply with the reforms promised in exchange for the loan. Parliament ended up dismissing Jan in April after a motion of censure gestated, according to the former head of government, in an international conspiracy led by the United States.
After the agreement with the IMF, Pakistan plans to request between 9,000 and 10,000 million euros in additional loans from other multilateral creditors, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank or the Islamic Development Bank.
For now, the prime minister has announced this Thursday a reduction of 18 rupees (about 0.08 euros) in the price of a liter of gasoline and 40 rupees (about 0.1 euros) a liter of diesel, as well as additional and similar reductions of kerosene and light diesel, to avoid the outbreak of a popular crisis like the one that occurred in countries on the Asian continent, such as Sri Lanka.
“In accordance with my commitment to the nation, the Coalition Government has rushed to transfer the benefit of lower oil prices to the masses,” Sharif said on his Twitter account.
“We will continue to provide aid as soon as we have a financial cushion to do so. I believe in an honest conversation with the nation,” he added in a message posted on his Twitter account.
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