Pakistan calls for global cooperation on digital assets

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has called for stronger global cooperation to develop regulatory and institutional frameworks for digital assets, warning that countries must either shape the future of finance or risk being shaped by it.

Minister of State and Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) Bilal Bin Saqib made these remarks while delivering a keynote address virtually at the United Nations Headquarters during a session on “Digital Assets and Blockchain for Sustainable Development: Advancing Digital Finance through Innovation.”

The session was convened by the Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the United Nations in collaboration with the UNDP, UNCTAD and the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology (ODET), bringing together member states, UN entities and private-sector stakeholders.

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Bin Saqib said digital assets, tokenisation and distributed ledger technologies offered emerging economies an opportunity to rethink financial infrastructure around inclusion, efficiency and access.

“The question before this room is not whether these technologies will scale. They will. The question is: who will shape them, and in whose interest,” he said.

He highlighted the scale of global financial exclusion, noting that around 1.4 billion adults remain outside the formal financial system, while billions more face expensive remittances, slow settlement mechanisms and limited access to credit.

The minister pointed out that the average cost of sending USD200 across borders remains more than twice the 3 percent target set under Sustainable Development Goal 10.c, arguing that closing this gap could return billions of dollars annually to families.

He said the potential of digital finance extended beyond payments and remittances.

Digital identity and verifiable financial histories, he said, could enable small businesses, farmers and women entrepreneurs to demonstrate economic activity without relying solely on conventional collateral or documentation.

Similarly, tokenisation could help mobilise capital by fractionalising assets ranging from infrastructure bonds to renewable energy projects, while distributed ledger technology could enhance transparency in public expenditure and supply chains.

However, Bin Saqib cautioned that technology should not be viewed as an automatic solution to development challenges.

He identified risks including retail market volatility, illicit finance, concentration of economic power and the growing regulatory divide between countries with advanced digital capabilities and those lacking institutional capacity.

“The choice before every Member State is not regulate or don’t regulate. It is simpler, and starker, than that: to govern the future, or be governed by it,” he said.

The PVARA chairman stressed that regulation needed to evolve alongside technological innovation, warning that delayed regulation could expose consumers and markets to risks, while regulation driven primarily by fear could push digital activity into less transparent environments.

He said the emerging global experience suggested that regulation should be viewed as a means of building markets rather than blocking them.

“No nation rises alone, and no nation should be left to rise alone,” Bin Saqib said, urging member states to turn the UN briefing into the beginning of deeper international cooperation.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026