Pakistan, IDB finalise $3 billion ''Country Partnership Strategy''

Pakistan and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) have finalised negotiation on ''Country Partnership Strategy'' worth $3 billion for a period of three years, while approval from the bank''s board is awaited. This was stated by Economic Affairs Division Secretary Wajid Ali here on Friday at a briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on EAD.
He said that negotiations on partnership strategy have been finalised and the document is waiting approval from board of the bank. He claimed that $555 million foreign inflows have been received during July-October 2011-12, which is $97 million more than $458 million received during the same period of last year.
He provided details of EAD expenditures of first quarter of the current fiscal year to the Committee saying that according to the Federal budget 2011-12, the total expenditure of EAD has been allocated Rs 421 million of which EAD was supposed to spend Rs 105 million during the first three months. However, only Rs 46 million have been spent largely because of pressure to curtail the expenditure owing to fiscal position.
He told the committee that in energy sector most of the projects are being financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) while the World Bank is making most of its financing in education and power sectors of Pakistan. "A foreign-funded project can take 6-12 months in its approval and the bilateral donors are usually interested in financing of those projects that cost less than $200 million", the Secretary said.
Regarding distribution of energy savers, Wajid said that the Ministry of Water and Power had conducted bidding for the procurement of energy savers but due to some technical problems, the bidding was not accepted. Now it has again conducted re-bidding process and sent its report to the ADB. After the consideration of the Bank, the procurement process for the energy savers would start.
He said that there were 15 on-going projects of health while the amount committed for these projects was $481.4 million. Out of the total amount committed, $265.01 million have been disbursed so far. He said that China has committed RMB (Chinese currency) 7 million for the treatment of 1000 cataract patients of Pakistan. In this regard, first phase of 500 surgeries of cataract patients is scheduled to start from December 5, 2011 at PIMS Islamabad and Nishtar Hospital Multan. Earlier, a survey was conducted by China, and the hospitals have already been marked where the treatment would take place, and 250 patients from Nishtar Hospital Multan, 250 from PIMS, 100 from Helper''s Hospital, Quetta, 100 from DHQ, Muzaffarabad, 100 from DHQ Skardu and 200 from LUMHS Jamshoro have been selected by China already while for the security reasons not even a single hospital of KP has been included in the list. The Secretary said that the foreign-funded projects were suspended in FATA since 2009 due to law and order situation but have started for the last one year.
Wajid said that Germany has been financing mostly in the health projects of KP since long but for the next year onwards, its financing would also be for the health projects in Punjab but Germans are still not prepared for making any financing in Sindh and Balochistan in health sector. Most of the polio cases are coming from southern Punjab and the government is trying to give it special attention in this regard, he added. He said that the Ministry of Youth Affairs has ''Youth Exchange Program'' with both China and Turkey.