Daily Times
Shaukat Tarin says govt plans to tap undrawn allocated $20bn from Asian Bank, World Bank
May 8, 2021
Minister for Finance Affairs Shaukat Tarin has said that Pakistan planned to boost spending on large infrastructure projects by as much as 40 percent to create jobs and foster productivity in an economy crippled by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that the federal government would earmark as much as Rs 900 billion (six billion dollars) for development expenditure in the year beginning July 2021. He said that the economy needed to expand by five percent next year.
“That’s the bare minimum we need for a country this size,” said Tarin, who is due to present a new budget next month. Tarin, a former banker, was appointed last month as the fourth finance minister since Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government took power in 2018.