ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar has termed Opposition parties’ narrative on Financial Action Task Force (FATF) shameful and condemnable.
“The opposition parties are making political point-scoring for its gains,” the Energy Minister said, while addressing a press conference in Islamabad today (Saturday). He said the national economy was heading into the right direction due to the prudent economic policies of the incumbent government.
The federal minister further said the international community and FATF acknowledged and recognized the considerable progress and efforts made by Pakistan on an action plan with high-level commitment.
Hammad Azhar pointed out that FATF has given a new 7-point action plan. “The new action plan is mainly focused to counter money laundering, which was relatively easy than the terror financing. We have set a target to meet this in 12 months,” he added.
“Pakistan was included in FATF grey list during the tenure of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) regime,” he said, adding, “However, now we were facing this challenge and we would try to address or resolve it.”
He also said the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) led government presented the people-friendly budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022 despite of financial crunch. “All economic indicators showed an upward trend and the industry was also growing fast”, he added.
Talking about the energy shortage, Azhar said, “In the meantime, we are also making alternative arrangements to meet the shortfall of electricity and we would face this challenge in coming days.”
“We will try to fill this gap of load shedding and even if it is needed, it will be minimized so that all this can be done in a better way,” he said, pointing out that the load shedding was occurred due to down trend of water in Tarbella Dam.
“The rate of use of furnace oil has come down to the lowest level in the last two and half years which will be further reduced in future,” he concluded.
