Islamabad:

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb soon promised good news from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and emphasized that negotiations with the global lender were in the last stages and he saw no obstacle to a successful conclusion of the negotiations.

When we talk to the media persons after treating a ceremony on the occasion of ‘The World for Glacier’, organized by the Ministry of Climate Change in the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) headquarters, the minister claimed significant progress in conversations with IMF on climate financing.

“Negotiations with the IMF are in progress and there is no major obstacle to success with these conversations,” Aurangzeb said in an informal chat with journalists. “Negotiations with the IMF will soon be completed. Pakistan reaches the goals of financial discipline and we will soon get good news from the IMF,” he added.

He said the country needed support from its development partners and the United Nations to tackle climate change. In this regard, he described the conversations with the IMF in the last two weeks “positive” and called them a promising step towards securing the important funding.

Previously, the minister said the ceremony that the country was suffering a lot due to the devastating super floods in 2022. He added that the government received promises of $ 10 billion in support of rehabilitation projects in flood damage, but the help could not be used due to lack of viable projects.

“Climate change is an important topic for Pakistan, but climate change control is the real challenge for us. We couldn’t prepare viable projects so we couldn’t use help. We’ll have to come up with viable projects for climate financing,” he told the audience.

When he talked about the environment, he pointed out that Pakistan was home to more than 3,000 glacies, 33 of which were “extremely dangerous”. He warned that more than 7 million people were at risk due to possible flooding of the glacial lake (Glofs).

“There is an urgent need for a comprehensive strategy to tackle climate risks,” he said, adding that there was a national climate test rate, but its implementation had been a major challenge. “A ‘glacier protection and resilience strategy’ is presented for public review.”

He said “climate change” and “growing population” were the two major threats to the country. “Low rainfall in winter is an indication of a major threat,” he said, adding that good progress was made with the country’s partnership interviews with the World Bank, but “We have to bring useful projects to climate.”

At present, he said, environmental degradation and large population were major existential threats to the country’s economy. “The government will provide all financial and technical resources so that the economy can move forward,” he said.

“The 10-year economic reform program is prepared by the government with the support of the World Bank, where environmental challenges will have a more important place. The World Bank will give us full support in this regard,” he added.

(With input from app)