ISLAMABAD: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan has made it mandatory for all incoming and outgoing passengers to fill out a currency declaration form, said an official statement on Tuesday, to meet yet another requirement of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Pakistan has been on the international watchdog’s “grey list” of countries since 2018 due to inadequate controls over money laundering and terrorism financing.
However, the country moved closer to exiting the list in recent months after implementing FATF recommendations to strengthen its financial system.
The Paris-based international watchdog also praised Pakistani officials for making substantial progress while saying its team would soon carry out an onsite visit of the country.
The CAA notification on Tuesday said no passenger would be allowed to board a flight or leave the airport without submitting the declaration.
“For inbound flights, airlines are required to ensure in-flight announcement by the flight crew for every inbound flight for submission of subject declaration wherein the passengers will mention the currency under the regulatory requirement of FATF,” the notification informed.
“The said declaration will be deposited at the customs counter before the immigration desk at international arrival,” it added.
The CAA said airline staff and travel agents should provide a copy of the declaration form to all potential passengers who intend to be on an outbound flight while booking their tickets.
“At check-in counters, airlines are directed to issue boarding pass only once the passenger has deposited the declaration with the them,” the notification added.
Pakistan fulfills another FATF condition, makes currency declaration mandatory for air travelers
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Pakistan fulfills another FATF condition, makes currency declaration mandatory for air travelers
- No passenger will be able to board a flight or leave the airport without submitting the declaration form
- The global financial watchdog praised Pakistan for implementing its recommendations in its last meeting
Pakistan starts vaccinating intending Hajj pilgrims against meningitis, flu and polio
- The annual Hajj pilgrimage is expected to take place in June
- Over 113,000 Pakistanis are expected to perform Hajj this year
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has started vaccinating intending Hajj pilgrims against meningitis, flu and polio ahead of this year’s pilgrimage, the Pakistani religion ministry said on Tuesday.
The annual pilgrimage is expected to take place in June. Nearly 90,000 Pakistanis are expected to travel to Saudi Arabia under the government scheme, while 23,620 Pakistanis will perform Hajj through private tour operators this year.
The South Asian country has made arrangement for the vaccination of pilgrims at 11 Hajj camps established across the country, according to the religious affairs ministry.
“Hajj pilgrims should visit the Hajj camps as per the given schedule,” the ministry said. “Pilgrims must get the yellow card issued by the government after getting vaccinated.”
Pakistan will launch Hajj flight operations from Apr. 29, with the first flight departing from the eastern city of Lahore.
While a precise number of pilgrims for Hajj 2025 is difficult to be determined in advance, projections suggest it will be a record-breaking year, with over 2.5 million pilgrims expected.
“Special arrangements have been made for coronavirus vaccine for pilgrims above 65 years of age,” the Pakistani religion ministry added.
Fleeing Pakistan, Afghans rebuild from nothing
- Since April 1, more than 92,000 Afghans have been sent back to their country of origin, out of the some three million the UN says are living in Pakistan
- Many had lived in Pakistan for decades after fleeing successive wars, crises in Afghanistan but did not wait to be arrested by Pakistani forces before leaving
Torkham: Pushed out of Pakistan where she was born, Nazmine Khan’s first experience of her country, Afghanistan, was in a sweltering tent at a border camp.
“We never thought we would return to Afghanistan,” said the 15-year-old girl, who has little idea of what will become of her or her family, only that she is likely to have fewer freedoms.
“When our parents told us we had to leave, we cried,” added Khan.
Having nowhere to go in Afghanistan, she and six other family members shared a stifling tent in the Omari camp near the Torkham border point.
Islamabad, accusing Afghans of links to narcotics and “supporting terrorism,” announced a new campaign in March to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghans, with or without documents.
Many had lived in Pakistan for decades after fleeing successive wars and crises but did not wait to be arrested by Pakistani forces before leaving, seeing their removal as inevitable.
Since April 1, more than 92,000 Afghans have been sent back to their country of origin, according to Islamabad, out of the some three million the United Nations says are living in Pakistan.
Khan’s family fled Afghanistan in the 1960s. Her four brothers and sister were also born in Pakistan.
“In a few days we’ll look for a place to rent” in the border province of Nangarhar where the family has roots, she told AFP, speaking in Pakistan’s commonly spoken tongue of Urdu, not knowing any Afghan languages.
In the family’s tent there is little more than a cloth to lie on and a few cushions, but no mattress or blanket. Flies buzz under the tarpaulin as countless children in ragged clothes come and go.
When it comes to her own future, Khan feels “completely lost,” she said.
Having dropped out of school in Pakistan, the Taliban authorities’ ban on girls studying beyond primary school will hardly change the course of her life.
But from what little she heard about her country while living in eastern Pakistan’s Punjab, she knows that “here there are not the same freedoms.”
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban authorities have imposed restrictions on women characterised by the UN as “gender apartheid.”
Women have been banned from universities, parks, gyms and beauty salons and squeezed from many jobs.
“It is now a new life... for them, and they are starting this with very little utilities, belongings, cash, support,” said Ibrahim Humadi, program lead for non-governmental group Islamic Relief, which has set up about 200 tents for returnees in the Omari camp.
Some stay longer than the three days offered on arrival, not knowing where to go with their meager savings, he said.
“They also know that even in their area of return, the community will be welcoming them, will be supporting them... but they know also the community are already suffering from the situation in Afghanistan,” he added.
Around 85 percent of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
“We had never seen (Afghanistan) in our lives. We do not know if we can find work, so we are worried,” said Jalil Khan Mohamedin, 28, as he piled belongings — quilts, bed frames and fans — into a truck that will take the 16 members of his family to the capital Kabul, though nothing awaits them there.
The Taliban authorities have said they are preparing towns specifically for returnees.
But at one site near Torkham, there is nothing more than cleared roads on a rocky plain.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) believes “greater clarity” is needed to ensure that the sites intended for returnees are “viable” in terms of basic infrastructure and services such as health and education.
It’s important that “returnees are making informed decisions and that their relocation to the townships is voluntary,” communications officer Avand Azeez Agha told AFP.
Looking dazed, Khan’s brother Dilawar still struggles to accept leaving Pakistan, where he was born 25 years ago.
His Pakistani wife did not want to follow him and asked for a divorce.
“When we crossed the border, we felt like going back, then after a day it felt fine,” said the former truck driver.
“We still don’t understand. We were only working.”
US tech giant joins hands with Saudi think-tank to launch AI-led, Shariah-compliant global ESG Index
US tech giant joins hands with Saudi think-tank to launch AI-led, Shariah-compliant global ESG Index
- The new index aims to bridge $2 trillion Islamic economy with global ESG standards, says CEO of US tech firm
- Saudi think-tank Albaraka Forum says the index will help grow the Islamic economy to $7 trillion in three years
KARACHI: US tech firm Spectreco LLC and AlBaraka Forum, a Saudi think-tank, would launch an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Index in June to develop a robust benchmark for sustainable investments that align with the Islamic law and global regulations, the Spectreco chief executive officer told Arab News.
The two partners announced the launch of the Artificial Intelligence-led Shariah-compliant ESG index at the 45th AlBaraka Islamic Economics Symposium which was held last week in the Saudi city of Madinah.
“The actual launch of this index will happen in Istanbul in June,” said Khan, the winner of UK’s prestigious Order of the British Empire who was born in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta.
“In the next three to five years, we hope to make this index [will be] the most widely used index in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region, starting with Saudi Arabia and led by it.”
The index is designed to be a “game changer” and a smart, technology-driven solution that will integrate the faith-based financial system with global ESG regulations. It will have the fundamentals of both the global ESG regulations and Shariah-compliant financial systems, and will be binding them through technology, according to Khan.
Spectreco and AlBaraka are currently looking for users, asset managers, banks and funds for the index that would help the Islamic economy and the wider world to integrate in a more value proposition-oriented way. The initiative would serve stakeholders, including investors, regulators and Islamic finance institutions seeking to align faith-based investment practices with modern sustainability goals, as the reporting of their compliance with ESG regulations is becoming mandatory for companies from Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia Pacific, and parts of North America.
“Now your trade and FDI both have embedded the sustainability and ESG and carbon footprint mechanisms across their space,” Khan told Arab News in an interview.
He said Islamic economies from the Middle East and North Africa region, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, were moving toward mandatory ESG compliance reporting, while Oman had already made it mandatory.
“A huge Islamic economy is moving toward mandatory reporting,” said Khan, whose firm aims to simplify sustainability reporting, compliance and performance tracking across multiple jurisdictions.
Speaking of the leverage his company has over others in terms of entering Saudi Arabia and other gulf markets, Khan said they have a technology that has an end-to-end mechanism and is driven by data, evidence and AI in the space of ESG and sustainability.
“We have on-ground expertise of the built environment and financial services and investor paradigm,” he said.
Yousef Hassan Khalawi, secretary-general at the Albaraka Forum that aims to advance Islamic economy, said the global Islamic economy was attracting more and more people and its size was expected to increase to $7 trillion by 2028.
“This is yet not that number which can represent the capacity of Muslims which are as a population now almost around 25 percent” of the world population, Khalawi told Arab News in a separate interview from Bahrain.
At $2 trillion, he said, the Islamic finance industry is still less than five percent of the global finance industry. He said the Shariah-compliant index would encourage bankers and business developers to develop more products that would meet global sustainability standards.
“It is, it should be a global index which means it should cover banks from Indonesia till Nigeria till even South Africa,” Khalawi said.
Around 65 percent of Islamic banking assets were concentrated in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region as well as Malaysia, according to the Albaraka official. In Saudi Arabia, the size of retail Islamic banking stood more than 95 percent while the corporate size was over 70 percent.
“Here, you are focusing on the major markets and then the rest of the world will come easier,” he added.
Khalawi called Pakistan a “very important nation,” with one of the “fiercest creators” of the Shariah-compliant economy.
Pakistan’s Islamic banking is growing at more than 20 percent every year and its government is trying to fully make its interest-based financial system Shariah-compliant by Dec. 2027, a deadline set by Pakistan’s Shariah court in April 2022.
“Many initiatives also will come in Pakistan,” Khalawi said. “For sure, we are considering Pakistan, as I said, in every single initiative we have.”
At least 13 killed as passenger truck falls into ravine in southern Pakistan
- The accident occurred overnight in Jamshoro district of Sindh province
- Hospital officials said some of the injured were in critical condition
MULTAN: A speeding truck carrying laborers, women and children fell into a ravine in southern Pakistan, killing at least 13 people and injuring 20 others, police said Tuesday.
The road accident occurred overnight in Jamshoro district in southern Sindh province, city police chief Saddique Changra told reporters.
Hospital officials said some of the injured were in critical condition.
According to local media, the accident happened as dozens of laborers were returning to their homes in Sindh’s Badin district after harvesting wheat in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
Road accidents are common in Pakistan, where highways and roads are poorly maintained and traffic laws are widely ignored.
Pakistan reassures IMF it will stay reform course on sidelines of IMF-World Bank meetings
- IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva acknowledges Pakistan has made ‘great progress’ in restoring macroeconomic stability despite global challenges
- The statement came after Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb’s meeting with Georgieva in Washington on the sidelines of IMF-World Bank spring meetings
ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has reassured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that his country would stay the reform course under its $7 billion bailout program, the Pakistani finance ministry said on Tuesday, on the opening day of the IMF-World Bank spring meetings.
Aurangzeb is currently on a visit to Washington, United States to attend the 2025 spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group, where he has held a series of high-level engagements on the sidelines.
In his meeting with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, Aurangzeb thanked the IMF team for a staff-level agreement on the first review of Pakistan’s $7 billion program and a new arrangement under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
Pakistan secured the $7 billion program in Sept. last year as it moved to consolidate its economy since averting a default in 2023. Islamabad has since undertaken several reforms to reduce public debt, maintain low inflation, improve energy sector viability, and to accelerate growth.
“He reiterated the Government of Pakistan’s commitment to maintaining the reform momentum and extended an invitation from the Prime Minister of Pakistan for Ms. Georgieva to visit the country,” the Pakistani finance ministry said.
Georgieva said Pakistan had made “great progress” in restoring macroeconomic stability despite global challenges.
“We continue to work with the authorities on their reform agenda for the benefit of Pakistan’s people,” she said on X, following her meeting with the Pakistani finance minister and central bank governor.
The finance minister held a meeting with World Bank Group President Ajay Banga and commended its leadership in developing a transformative Country Partnership Framework (CPF) — a decade-long strategic roadmap centered around measurable impacts and outcomes.
“He appreciated the World Bank’s ongoing assistance in crafting a comprehensive implementation strategy and action plan to operationalize the CPF while simultaneously enhancing overall efficiency,” Aurangzeb’s ministry said.
“The Minister also provided a detailed overview of Pakistan’s macroeconomic turnaround and reaffirmed the government’s unwavering commitment to ensuring sustainable economic stability.”
In his meetings with Deloitte and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) officials, Aurangzeb discussed cooperation in multiple areas like energy and private sector reforms and critical minerals.
“The Finance Minister met with the Deloitte delegation and apprised them of Pakistan’s macroeconomic outlook, the government’s sectoral development agenda, and its export-led growth priorities. Both sides explored potential collaboration in energy sector reforms, critical minerals extraction and marketing, privatization, technology, crypto policy, and the operationalization of the Country Partnership Framework (CPF),” the Pakistani finance ministry said.
“He reviewed progress on Diversified Payment Rights (DPR) and commended the IFC’s pivotal role in securing USD 2.5 billion in debt financing for the Reko Diq Copper and Gold Mine Project in Balochistan. The Minister emphasized the importance of ensuring that local communities benefit from the project’s economic gains.”
Earlier in the day, the finance minister attended a luncheon hosted by the US-Pakistan Business Council at the US Chamber of Commerce, where he engaged with corporate leaders and detailed Pakistan’s economic progress and reform measures in taxation, energy, and privatization. He emphasized the importance of regional trade, market diversification, and sectoral expansion, and expressed Pakistan’s commitment to continued collaboration in the mining and minerals sector.
During his visit to Washington, Aurangzeb would also meet with finance ministers and counterpart leaders of China, the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye and officials of global credit rating agencies, commercial and investment banks.
