Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan pledged to carry out deep structural reforms of an economy that’s staring at a balance-of-payment crisis, after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offered to avert it, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has pledged to carry out deep structural economic reforms
00:07as his country faces a balance of payments crisis.
00:10The leader met with Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, this week in Dubai as the
00:15country faces a $12 billion deficit in its foreign exchange payments.
00:21The country has already been given $3 billion by the UAE and $3 billion by Saudi Arabia
00:27and has been negotiating with the IMF for some months now about a bailout.
00:33So far the talks have been extended further and further.
00:35There was hopefully a resolution in January that never appeared, so the conversation rolls
00:41on into February.
00:43But Khan tweeted yesterday that a convergence of interests had been found and that he hoped
00:49a resolution would be agreed upon with the IMF shortly.
00:52Elsewhere the UAE's Minister of Economy, Sultan al-Mansouri, has said that Britain
00:56has approached the UAE in hopes of securing a trade pact in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
01:03Of course, these types of deals take years to formalise often and al-Mansouri, who was
01:08speaking at a panel at the World Government Summit, said as much.
01:11He said that these agreements can often take many, many years.
01:15He didn't provide any other details aside from that, so we're yet to fully understand
01:19exactly how Britain approached the Gulf country and on what terms it was looking for a trade
01:24deal.
01:25But we do know that the clock is ticking down fast now with under 50 days left to go until
01:30Brexit.
01:31The UK has yet to be able to begin negotiating any trade deals with countries outside of
01:36the EU as it tries to formalise its exit from the union.
01:41And lastly, the Oracle conference is set to begin in Dubai tomorrow morning, typically
01:46only a conference that takes place in San Francisco this year.
01:49It will be happening in Dubai and Singapore as well.
01:52Our technology correspondent Nourshad Cherouil says that the conference is set to unveil
01:57a number of Oracle technologies that are coming to the region.
02:01The news comes after last month's announcement from Oracle that it will be opening a data
02:05centre in Abu Dhabi.
02:06It joins the likes of SAP and Microsoft, who will also be opening data centres in Dubai
02:12and Abu Dhabi later this year.
02:13That's all from me, I'm Ed Clouse.
02:15Until tomorrow, you can check out the latest headlines on gulfnews.com.
02:18Thanks for watching.