Ahsan Iqbal, the minister of planning, told reporters that Pakistan anticipates receiving $27 billion in investments from Gulf nations over the course of the next five years through the Special Investment Facilitation Council.
As per the minister, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already received project specifics from the federal government.
According to Express Tribune, these investments are anticipated to be made over the course of the next five years and will probably come from private investors and sovereign wealth funds.
It is noteworthy that in November 2023, Jehanzeb Khan, the secretary of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) Apex Committee, stated that $70 billion in investments were anticipated over the course of the following three to five years.
He said that while some contributions were expected to come from foreign governments through sovereign wealth funds, the majority of this financial investment was anticipated to come from private individuals.
It is believed that the $27 billion investment is a more reasonable amount. Still, it is a significant downgrade from the $70 billion prediction made last year.
In a separate news, the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) foreign exchange reserves climbed dramatically by $1.168 billion million on a weekly basis, reaching a 2.5-year high of $10.702 billion as of September 27.
The total amount of liquid foreign reserves that the nation possessed was $15.983 billion. There were $5.281 billion in net foreign reserves maintained by financial institutions.
The SBP obtained the first payment of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 760 million, or $1.03 billion, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week, which led to an increase in the foreign exchange reserves.
